"The people who are absent are the ideal;……" — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace."
More Absence Quotes
- Every one knows, that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds… — Mary Astell
- In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? — Saint Augustine
- Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes… — Hans Urs von Balthasar
- Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. — Henry Adams
- I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me… — Brendan Behan
- Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. — Ambrose Bierce
- Life has become the ideology of its own absence. — Theodor Adorno
- The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent… — Elizabeth Bowen
- Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will… — David Bowie
- Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates. — Jean de la Bruyere
- Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like… — Bill Bryson
- There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. — Samuel Butler