"Everywhere he brings us into the presence of living, generous humanity—mixed and erring, and self-deluding, but saved from utter corruption by the salt of some noble impulse, some disinterested effort, some beam of good nature, even though grotesque or homely. And his mode of treatment seems to us precisely that which is really moral in its influence. It is without exaggeration; he is in no haste to alarm readers into virtue by melodramatic consequences; he quietly follows the stream of fact and of life; and waits patiently for the moral processes of nature as we all do for her material processes. The large tolerance of Goethe, which is markedly exhibited in Wilhelm Meister, is precisely that to which we point as the element of moral superiority."
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Unsigned article reprinted in The Writings of George Eliot: Essays and Uncollected Papers (1908)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749 – 1832
deutscher Dichter
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