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The Sorrows of Young Werther quotes
16 quotes from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #2527 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery?
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.
I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy.
The human race is but a monotonous affair.
I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.
My dear friend, what a thing is the heart of man!
All learned professors and doctors are agreed that children do not comprehend the cause of their desires; but that the grown-up should wander about this earth like children, without knowing whence they come, or whither they go, influenced as little by fixed motives, but guided like them by biscuits, sugar-plums, and the rod,—this is what nobody is willing to acknowledge; and yet I think it is palpable.
My dear friend I promise you I will improve; I will no longer, as has ever been my habit, continue to ruminate on every petty vexation which fortune may dispense; I will enjoy the present, and the past shall be for me the past.
She alone is inexhaustible, and capable of forming the greatest masters.
What a child is man that he should be so solicitous about a look! What a child is man!
Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!
Witness, Heaven, how often I lie down in my bed with a wish, and even a hope, that I may never awaken again.
What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?
I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.
Think of you—I do not think of you: you are ever before my soul!
— Spoken by a character · II. OCTOBER 20
Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason, or after he has lost it?