Ordinary people know little of the time and effort it takes to learn to read. I have been eighty years at it, and have not reached my goal.
Tags: books-and-reading

Other Quotes by "Goethe"

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.
Tags: scientism, science, phenomenology, instrumentality, humanistm
If the whole world I once could see On free soil stand, with the people free Then to the moment might I say, Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.
Tags: world, time, passage-of-time, moments, freedom
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.
Tags: wisdom
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
Tags: love, inspirational, goethe, friendship, connection, community
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.
Tags: youth
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