Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Man shouldn't be able to see his own face. That's what's most terrible. Nature gave him the possibility of not seeing it, as well as the incapacity of not seeing his own eyes.

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

I think, personally, it's our flaws that define us to us - or maybe it's just me.

I consider my selfbeing ... that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.

You can't really make people be any different than what they are.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

I'm not always what I think I am, but I am what I think.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

Ultimately, I'm not so sure that, as a person, I'm all that interesting.

I've got a wonky nose. Is it classical, is it not? That's what's hard work, getting down into the nitty-gritty of who are the human beings behind the front of what they present?

However near and dear to you may be your wife, children, friends, they are not you; they are outside of you.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

What's in your soul is in your soul.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

Human beings, from their own point of view, are very different than what people see.

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.

Everybody has their own way of tapping into their realness.

Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.

It seems to me that we are profoundly ignorant of ourselves.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that's always existed.