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Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried Herder Books

Philosopher

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“After the mother tongue follows French, for it is the most widely spoken and indispensable language of Europe; according to our present-day standards it is the most cultivated; fine style and the expressions of taste have been for the most part formed in this language and translated from it into others; it is the simplest and most uniform of languages from which to obtain a foretaste of philosophical grammar; it is the most suitable for the purposes of narrative, logic and reasoning. It must therefore, by the standards of our modern world, follow immediately after the mother tongue and precede every other, even Latin. I would like even the scholar to know French better than Latin!”

FrenchFrench Language
Book:Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe
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“Have you never observed that children will sometimes, of a sudden, give utterance to ideas which makes us wonder how they got possession of them? Which presuppose a long series of other ideas and secret self-communings? Which break forth like a full stream out of the earth, an infallible sign that the stream was not produced in a moment from a few raindrops, but had long been flowing concealed beneath the ground?”

GivingChildrenLongIdeasSelfSometimesMomentsEarthSecretWonderBreakSeriesPossessionStreamsReincarnationConcealedInfallibleUtteranceRaindrops
Author:Johann Gottfried Herder
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“The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so. But if a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may appear my friend.”

IfsMenMayLittlesEnemyDutyMy FriendsPraiseMirrorsForgivingFaultsSmallest
Author:Johann Gottfried Herder
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“Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.”

WorldMayChildrenCountryFormHumanityLanguageRaceWifeRevolutionGeniusLaborPropertyWaveStreamsCustomsOne LoveMisleadStagnantMarshes
Author:Johann Gottfried Herder
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“So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.”

MenBookWholeEarthLastsScienceSpiritCreativeWrittenCreationRevolutionEvolutionCreaturesOriginalsSeriesChaosAncientSubstanceSandWarmthPeculiarCrownsClayExquisiteMarbleGeologySlateLimesCreative Spirit
Book:Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man
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