Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.

I want readers to rehearse that day when everything shatters and think through what they'll hang onto when that happens.

Certain things do not effect me anymore, which is not always good. There is always commotion, but I notice that hardly anything affects me or puts me out of balance.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.

I was able to convince my body that I could take it and nobody could hurt me. I might've gotten cut, stitches over my eyes. Broken nose. Broken hands. But I never really got hurt.

If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it- to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger.

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.

I fight with love and i laugh with rage....you gotta live light enough to see the humor, and long enough to see some change.

The great challenge is to refuse to let the bad things that happen to us do bad things to us. That is the crucial difference between adversity and tragedy.

The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.

You, sleeping on your bed of nails. Weeping an ocean beyond the pale. Strange, sorrow is your greatest skill. You're suffering from overkill... Choose whether to laugh or to cry. Menace and promise mingle in your eye. Wait, it's only a matter of time. You know everything will be fine... Rain falls down and the seas run high. When you're by my side we can rise above it. Let me dry all the tears inside. On your way you cannot hide from the howling wind and the roaring tide. You might get hurt but your fears will subside when you at last escape from the tears inside.

By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

Americans have mastered the art of living with the unacceptable.

Whatever happens, we can deal with it if we admit that it's happening and so on. So to be comfortable with what is - that is a real superpower.

It's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insanity.

My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita.

My heart is too thoroughly dried to be broken in a hurry, and I mean to live as long as I can.

Your superhuman power was to be able not to feel. Is it there inside everybody, this self that comes out while you are in captivity? You become the closest approximation of yourself that can tolerate living there.