Quotes by German Authors - Page 13

Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits.
Ernst Cassirer
Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.
Walter Benjamin
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Albert Einstein
I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.
Charles Bukowski
What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
Charles Bukowski
If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.
Hermann Hesse
Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.
Anne Frank
It is always the same. Whether you are walking or going by train, the way always seems shorter the second time than the first. (And that is true of distances that are not to be measured in miles and yards.)
Erich Kästner
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of other men —above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
However much or little I had written, on a subsequent reading it always seemed so fundamentally flawed that I had to destroy it immediately and begin again.
W.G. Sebald
Сè противречи едно на друго, сè протрчува едно крај друго, никаде нема сигурност. Сè може да се толкува вака, и сè може да се толкува обратно. Сета човечка историја може да се протолкува како развој и напредок, а истовремено без да се види нешто повеќе од пропаст и глупост. Зар нема вистина? Зар не постои вистинска и валидна наука?
Hermann Hesse
Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.
Novalis
Do you still want me to go to hell? I must admit, I don't know the way.
Robert Thier
Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
[D]oubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime. … [T]he highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God exists. … [T]hat which I do not trust myself to doubt, … without feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring guilt; that is no matter of theory, but a matter of conscience[.]
Ludwig Feuerbach
And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.
Charles Bukowski
Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac treeFrom which a small wood-owl calls.
Johannes Bobrowski
There was always a screen behind which one could hide— a superior who in turn had his superior— orders, instructions, duties, commands— and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called— there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.
Erich Maria Remarque
I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.
Karl Lagerfeld
I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called "God." As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room—and no need—for knowledge about God.
Erich Fromm
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rather than walk about holy places we can thus pause in our thoughts, examine our heart, and visit the wheel promised land.
Martin Luther
Picture to yourself the most beautiful girl imaginable! She was so beautiful that there would be no point, in view of my meagre talent for storytelling, in even trying to put her beauty into words. That would far exceed my capabilities, so I'll refrain from mentioning whether she was a blonde or a brunette or a redhead, or whether her hair was long or short or curly or smooth as silk. I shall also refrain from the usual comparisons where her complexion was concerned, for instance milk, velvet, satin, peaches and cream, honey or ivory, Instead, I shall leave it entirely up to your imagination to fill in this blank with your own ideal of feminine beauty.
Walter Moers
With the word "Repent" He was beckoning to us as the Savior, offering us His love and salvation. But behind this word we can also see the grief of God that His children have turned away from Him.
M. Basilea Schlink
And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him. As a ball-player plays with his balls, he played with his business-deals, with the people around him, watched them, found amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was not with them. The source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more. And at several times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of this childlike-naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live instead of just standing by as a spectator.
Hermann Hesse
Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.
Eckhart Tolle
It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.
Heinrich Heine
Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual.
Hans Jonas
For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?
Richard Courant
The fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat.1. The energy of the universe is constant.2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
Rudolf Clausius
Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.
Erich Fromm
Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.
J. C. F. von Schiller
Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Architecture is frozen music.
Goethe
If a man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.
Goethe
If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.
Friedrich Engels
Better know nothing than half-know many things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?
Walter Benjamin
What irritates me most of all about these morning people is their horribly good temper, as if they have been up for three hours and already conquered France. Particularly since the vast majority of them, in spite of rising so appallingly early, have performed anything but great deeds. In Berlin I have time and again met people who make no secret of the fact that their only reason for stirring at such an ungodly hour of the morning is so that they can leave the office earlier in the afternoon. I have suggested to several of these eight-hour logicians that they ought to start work at ten o'clock at night, thereby allowing them to leave at six in the morning and perhaps even arrive home before it is time to get up. Some even took this for a serious suggestion. In my opinion, only bakers need to work early in the morning.
Timur Vermes
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage he won't encounter many rivals.
G. C. Lichtenberg
Knowledge is power. The moment the masses acquire this power, control fades. And when control fades, chaos erupts.
Felix O. Hartmann
Beethoven can write music thank God - but he can do nothing else on earth.
Ludwig van Beethoven
There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society- and while they may have been called fools or criminals in their time they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned- and visualized something which can be called universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own existence.
Erich Fromm
I follow my heart for I can trust it.
J. C. F. von Schiller
How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?
Sophie Scholl
In Germany, people will agree in theory that prostitution should be legal, but they usually won't admit that they themselves have ever gone to a prostitute: "Yeah, it should be legal, and I have no problem with it, but I would never go to one. I'm above that." Then they secretly go to one anyway. On the down low. They won't admit it in polite company, because they don't want to look trashy.
Oliver Markus Malloy
Photoshop and Lightroom help me transform my photos into what my heart felt, but my camera couldn't quite capture!
Marius Vieth
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
How can one explain this trend towards a more colorless and shallow life? Well, the work was easier, if less healthy, and it brought in more money, more leisure, and perhaps more entertainment. A day in the country is long and hard. And yet the fruits of their present life were worthless compared to a single coin of their former life: a rest in the evening and a rural festivity. That they no longer knew the old kind of happiness was obvious from the discontentment which spread over their features. Soon dissatisfaction, prevailing over all their other moods, became their religion.
Ernst Jünger
Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.
Ernst Cassirer
The greatest thing about writing is that you get to shape more than one life.
Katja Michael
The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and penal code, the liberté, égalité, fraternité and the second of May 1852—all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: Everything that exists has this much worth, that it will perish.
Karl Marx
Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement: for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.
Max Beckmann
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts--such is the duty of the artist.
Robert Schumann
It is also said that the sheep heed the Shepherd, because they know his voice. Is it true that men recognize Christ's call and respond to it? In one sense it must be, for he has said so; yet much in me qualifies the statement. Actually I respond much more readily to the call of 'the others'; I neither really understand Christ's summons nor follow it. Therefore, in order that I may hear, he must not only speak, but also open my ears to his voice. Part of me, the profoundest part, listens to it, but superficial, loud contradiction often overpowers it. The opponents with whom God must struggle in order to win us are not primarily ‘the others,’ but ourselves; we bar his way. The wolf who puts the hireling to flight is not only outside; he is also within. We are the arch-enemy of our own salvation, and the Shepherd must fight first of all with us – for us.
Romano Guardini
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way but must accept his lot calmly even if they roll a few more upon it.
Albert Schweitzer