Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe realization of the self is only possible if one is productive, if one can give birth to one's own potentialities.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIn happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheAlas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhen I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe