Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quote

It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims (ed. 1963)