11 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes on Relationships

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes on relationships

4. Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world.

8. A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

30. Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth; Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.

36. What's it to you if I love you?

42. One says a lot in vain, refusing; The other mainly hears the 'No.'

49. Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly! Believe me, I don't think badly or wrongly of you. The arrows of Love are various: some scratch us, And our hearts suffer for years from their slow poison. But others strong-feathered with freshly sharpened points Pierce to the marrow, and quickly inflame the blood. In the heroic ages, when gods and goddesses loved, Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.

56. The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

59. Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.

104. Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.

141. The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

148. We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.