Quotes by German Authors - Page 6

Home is where your books are.
Kerstin Gier
This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.
Hermann Hesse
It takes time,patience and endurance to become a devout Muslim. No one, not even God, expects anyone to become an angel overnight. That’s fortunate, I thought, because I sensed that the road ahead might be a long one
Kristiane Backer
You tell me: 'Life is hard to bear.' But if it were otherwise why should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so tender! We are all of us pretty fine asses and asseses of burden!
Friedrich Nietzsche
Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned. "Temple" means... that a particular piece of ground is specially reserved, and marked off from the remainder of the land which is used either for agriculture or habitation... Similarly in divine worship a certain definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days... and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends.
Josef Pieper
Paper is more patient than man.
Anne Frank
[N]othing is more easily corrupted than an artist.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef Pieper
Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People are a soul-ego-spacesuit.
Stefan Emunds
This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
Karl Marx
There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere; privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in wait at every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness usually reigns, and folly does all the talking. Fate is cruel, and human beings are pathetic.
Arthur Schopenhauer
She had taught herself how to knit, and for the mare's scarf - it was green - she had given herself the best grade possible. And ...''That's silly!' Micha giggled. 'Well, who is the cliff queen, you or me?' Abel asked. 'It isn't my fault if you're giving yourself grades!
Antonia Michaelis
Learned arguments do not make a man holy and righteous, whereas a good life makes him dear to God.
Thomas à Kempis
Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, ifhe is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.
Hermann Hesse
Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open.Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me
Friedrich Nietzsche
I thought if only we could go onand meet again, shy as strangers.
Lisel Mueller
We throw ourselves down, as Jesus did, before the mystery of God's power present to us, knowing that the Cross is the true burning bush, the place of the flame of God's love, which burns but does not destroy.
Pope Benedict XVI
At Night on the High SeasAt night, when the sea cradles meAnd the pale star gleamLies down on its broad waves,Then I free myself whollyFrom all activity and all the loveAnd stand silent and breathe purely,Alone, alone cradled by the seaThat lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights.Then I have to think of my friendsAnd my gaze sinks into their eyes,And I ask each one, silent and alone:"Are you still mine?Is my sorrow a sorrow to you, my death a death?Do you feel from my love, my grief,Just a breath, just an echo?"And the sea peacefully gazes back, silent,And smiles: NOAnd no greetings and no answers come from anywhere.
Hermann Hesse
Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Your most important gear is your eye, heart and soul.
Marius Vieth
Titles don’t mean anything. What really matters is the impact you make on a daily basis!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
The temptation of Christ was harder, unspeakably harder, than the temptation of Adam; for Adam carried nothing in himself which could have given the tempter a claim and power over him. But Christ bore in himself the whole burden of the flesh, under the curse, under condemnation; and yet his temptation was henceforth to bring help and salvation to all flesh.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Stephanie had been raped, beaten and left for dead on the Atlantic City Boardwalk several times. You'd think she would have hit rock bottom after those experiences. But no. None of that made her quit. It just made her want to use even more drugs, to forget her miserable life. As long as she could get high, she didn't care if she was being raped in a dark alley. At this point in her life, a lethal overdose probably would have felt like her salvation.
Oliver Markus
In comparison with the spirit of priestly revenge all the remaining spirits are hardly worth considering.
Friedrich Nietzsche
To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.
Walter Benjamin
Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence without giving himself airs about it.
Goethe
Nature is a picture waiting to be taken.
Katja Michael
He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!
Friedrich Nietzsche
There had been a quarrel, she had been hurt, had wept. Now it was over; now she sat still and waited. Life would go on. As with children. As with animals. If only you did not talk, did not make simple things complicated, did not turn your soul inside out.
Hermann Hesse
The first forty years of life give us the text the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Schopenhauer
The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire.The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.
Charles Bukowski
The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited.
Oscar Hammerstein
Once a woman has forgiven a man she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.
Marlene Dietrich
For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.
Hermann Hesse
Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.
Hermann Hesse
All the girls I had ever loved were mine. Each gave me what she alone had to give and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take.
Hermann Hesse
There are people who can never go to Fantastica," said Mr. Coreander, "and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who fo to fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both world well again.
Michael Ende
Our knowledge of life is limited to death
Erich Maria Remarque
What the sense feels, what the spirit perceives, is never an end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the end of all things: they are as vain as that.
Nietszche
...the beautiful in nature is like a spark flashing momentarily and disappearing as soon as one tries to get hold of it.
Theodor Adorno
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Ich werde stehen und warten.Ich werde müde werden.Ich werde nicht einschlafen.Ich werde sterben.
Hermann Hesse
Faith is hidden household capital.
Johann von Goethe
Happy the man who knows his duties!
Christian Furchtegott Gellert
having nothing to struggleagainstthey have nothing to strugglefor.
Charles Bukowski
Everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in whether he has the aptitude for it or not.
Johann von Goethe
If the Baron meets with a parcel of negro ships carrying whites into slavery to work upon their plantations in a cold climate, should we therefore imagine that he intends a reflection on the present traffic in human flesh? And that, if the negroes should do so, it would be simple justice, as retaliation is the law of God! If we were to think this a reflection on any present commercial or political matter, we should be tempted to imagine, perhaps, some political ideas conveyed in every page, in every sentence of the whole. Whether such things are or are not the intentions of the Baron the reader must judge.
Rudolf Erich Raspe
I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.
Sophie Scholl
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm in the real world all rests on perseverance.
Johann von Goethe
If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With an evermore increase of industrialisation machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.
Heide Schönemann
Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us.
Pope Benedict XVI
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Adolf Hitler