Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleance me in the great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.

It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.

Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

That's what I wanted for myself for even just a little while-to be unaware of the rest of the world. I needed some time.

A book is the only real escape from this fallen world. Aside from death.

He breathed once more, holding the air in his chest, as if it were not air but something more--a sweet taste of freedom, of all cares lifted, everything over and done.

Writing let me escape... It let me escape the insistent tug of my family, and its ongoing misery. Sitting in front of the computer, with the screen blank and the cursor blinking, was the best escape I knew. And there was plenty to escape from.

Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell

How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page.

Of all the things that make for happiness, the love of books comes first. No matter how the world may have used us, sure solace lies there.

Though dreams can be deceiving; like faces are to hearts, they serve for sweet relieving, when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.

There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.

He never spoke of that night again, not to your mother, not to anyone else. He was ashamed for her, for Mickey, for himself. In the hospital, he stopped speaking altogether. Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.' ~pg 139

Dayodhuam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.

It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.

The book of Nature is that which the physician must read; and to do so he must walk over the leaves.

"Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.

She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room

I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyways.