“One learns to know only what one loves, and the deeper and fuller the knowledge is to be, the more powerful and vivid must be the love, indeed the passion”

Commentary: Do you consider yourself a passionate person? For Goethe, one of the great voices of the Romantic era, passion was essential in order to fully understand ourselves and our world. It is more common in our era to separate the head from the heart, and limit our knowing only to what intellect and reason make available. Our great advances in science and technology encourage us in subtle ways to mistrust the passion of the heart. However, we are psychologically incomplete until we can know our world through loving as well as through thinking.