Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection.

Scarcely anyone ever wants to be anybody else. However handicapped or unhappy he feels himself, he would not change places with other more fortunate mortals.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

Good enough never is.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

I was a perfect mother.

We always want what we don't have, and I'd like a long, sophisticated nose rather than a short, turned-up one.

Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having.

The more we focus on the things we don’t have, the more unhappy and more resentful we become.

A [wo]man who is unconscious of [her/]himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

I've been hearing it a lot, especially in the last few years; people will say things to me like "Well, if only I was like you in that movie," or "If only I could be with someone like you in that movie." And, you know, it's very flattering to hear that.

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.

We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.

Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it's a better cow than the one you've got in your own field. It's a fact. Right? And it never really works out that way.

We are born perfect, and we will die perfect. The problem is that we create that character in our story that we pretend to be, or that we want to be, and we cannot hide that from ourselves. We know that we are pretending to be what we are not in the name of perfection.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

Tt just seems to be human nature to seem to want to posit in another human being, qualities that you must know, in part of your mind, that human being couldn't possess because you don't possess.

We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves.

Tohru(thinking): There is an umeboshi-- on your back. Tohru (outloud): Maybe the reason people get jealous of eachother is because they can clearly see the umeboshi on other people's backs. I can see them too. I can see them perfectly. There is an amazing umeboshi on your back, Kyo-kun.

The nearest we can come to) perfect happiness is to cheat ourselves with the belief that we have got it.

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.