Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

I'm very sentimental and ambitious. I like to be relaxed and I like to live a peaceful existence, but that's very difficult considering I'm very neurotic. On the inside, I'm very chilled - but on the outside I'm a big mess of worry!

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

I was creative before I started meditating, but I had, looking back, a weakness. I wasn't self-assured. I had a little bit of melancholy. I had a lot of anger for my situations in life, and I would take this out on my first wife.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

Hell is in the here and now. So is Heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside us this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.

I rose to my knees, mouth dry and heart pounding, and paused to finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip through the hole and wiggled it at myself. Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I don't know, but I'm almost there. I hear my friends calling.

People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul.

From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.

Perhaps not being very self-aware in the past masked depression. I think I was confused. I think I was immature. I think I probably was quite depressed.

Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding.

To ignore one's spiritual self is unsettling, to say the least. That's a very profound outlook on it.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.

Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.

I don't know what I am. And it's not important.

The biggest problem for me was feeling that as I became more balanced and a better man that I wouldn't have the fire to create from.

I'm pretty sure I'm not at war with myself.