Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.

At the heart of all romanticism is suffering.

She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.

Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.

It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness

I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress.

I hate, and yet must love the thing I hate.

Even if your heart is broken and attacking you, you're still not better off without it.

I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.

This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.

My heart raced. He needs you, I thought. Don't let him down. I couldn't remember ever being so happy... or so scared.

I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.

THIS TORTURE Why should we tell you our love stories when you spill them together like blood in the dirt? Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor, or a fire we can’t see, but how does saying that push us through the top of the head into the light above the head? Love is not an iron pot, so this boiling energy won’t help. Soul, heart, self. Beyond and within those is one saying, How long before I’m free of this torture!

I love him," I said, but even to my own ears I didn't sound happy about it.

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.

You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.

I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.

There is no love without suffering.

Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

I bleed like nobody else.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.