"Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish..." - Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone!If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him,His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.
More by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.”
“Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.”
“Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.”
More on Regret
“Remorse - Regret that one waited so long to do it.”
“I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for.”
“Even four harnessed horses cannot bring imprudent words back into the mouth.”
More on Suffering
“How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?”
“If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.”
“The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war *is* glorious after all.”