No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheAustere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheLet us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
Johann Wolfgang von GoethePain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe