"No doubt you are right... there would..." - Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.
More by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“The safest thing is always to try to convert everything that is in us and around us into action; let the others talk and argue about it as they please.”
“A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.”
“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.”
More on Suffering
“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.”
“That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.”
“If you find here & now intolerable, you have options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”
More on Memory
“Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.”
“The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!”
“We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common sense, but we anticipate the future with transcendental senses. In our sanest moments we find ourselves naturally expecting or prepared for far greater changes than any which we have experienced within the period of distinct memory, only to be paralleled by experiences which are forgotten.”