A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
Related Quotes
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.
Those who are apparently absent can feel more present than the people right in front of you.
The profession of music is lacking in horse sense, not only because the commonplace variety of horse is absent from its operations, but because parts of the horse are noticeably present.
Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? —This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.
To Retain those who are present, be loyal to those who are absent.
Those who are absent, by its means become present; it [mail] is the consolation of life.
I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persue all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it is meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.
Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: "Present, they are absent."
Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.
I think almost every woman artist I've ever met has this ideal of being in a partnership working situation with a man, that men don't seem to share. They seem to want this ideal thing, that we'll always be together and work together.
It is quite sad, to me, that that ideal, that vision and understanding [of American founding ], doesn't seem to be a part of the current political season.
That is why all great men are modest: they consistently measure themselves not in comparison to other people but to the idea of perfection ever present in their minds, an ideal infinitely clearer and greater than any common people have, and they also realize how far they are from fulfilling their ideal.
'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.
in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.
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