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Quotes by German Authors
"If life - the craving for which is the very essence of our being - were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing."
"Capitalism: Teach a man to fish, but the fish he catches aren't his. They belong to the person paying him to fish, and if he's lucky, he might get paid enough to buy a few fish for himself."
"Health so far outweighs all external goods that a healthy beggars is truly more fortunate than a king in poor health."
"The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune."
"A thought comes when it will, not when I will."
"It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for."
"If I can't picture it, I can't understand it."
"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."
"The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never risen of indigestion. Only the Church . . . can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!"
"All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds."
"It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it."
"In general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends on our health alone."
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
"For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation."
"If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck."
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"
"Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do."
"Every word is a prejudice."
"There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits."
"It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone."
"I'm sentimental--I know. I'm desperate and silly--I know that too. Oh, help me!"
"Vasudeva listened with great attention. Listening carefully, he leteverything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning,all that searching, all joy, all distress. This was among theferryman's virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew howto listen. Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed howVasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how hedid not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience,did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening. Siddhartha felt,what a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to burry inhis heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering."
"He who is a firstling is ever sacrificed."
"Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
"Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts."
"Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done."
"Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason."
"I'm grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes."
"Dante, I think, committed a crude blunder when, with a terror-inspiring ingenuity, he placed above the gateway of his hell the inscription, 'I too was created by eternal love'--at any rate, there would be more justification for placing above the gateway to the Christian Paradise...the inscription 'I too was created by eternal hate'..."
"Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new."
"Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves."
"Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting over lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
"We live, I think, in the century of science and, perhaps, even in the century of physics."
"It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed."
"What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved."
"A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man."
"Therefore let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers' (Rom 13.1). The Christian must not be drawn to the bearers of high office; his calling is to stay below. The higher power are over him, and he must remain under them. The world exercises dominion, the Christian serves, and thus he shares the earthly lot of his Lord, who became a servant. 'For there is no power but of God.' (Mark 10.42-45) These words are addressed to the Christians, not to the powers."
"Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they shall themselves recognize the tyranny, and understand their own liberty."
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