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Quotes by German Authors
"Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think."
"The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph."
"For even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things."
"True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue."
"I think and think for months for years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."
"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."
"Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt."
"Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development, you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer."
"I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it."
"Liberation from ego is what we shramanas are seeking, O Exalted One. If I were your disciple, O Venerable One, I'm afraid it might befall me that my ego would be pacified and liberated only seemingly, only illusorily, that in reality it would survive and grow great, for then I would make the teaching, my discipleship, my love for you, and the community of the monks into my ego!"
"Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome."
"We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavour to efface them."
"Very often inertia, selfishness, and vanity play the greatest role in our trust in others; inertia when we prefer to trust somebody else, in order not to investigate, be vigilant, or act ourselves; selfishness when the desire to speak about our own affairs tempts us to confide in someone else; vanity when it concers something that we are proud of."
"Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being."
"The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole."
"It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it."
"The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ."
"If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity."
"Think... of the world which you carry within yourself... and set it above everything that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not loose too much time and too much courage in explaining your attitude to people."
"We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."
"One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old... and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening."
"Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public."
"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."
"How do I work? I grope."
"Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you."
"Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you."
"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."
"What I am in search of is not so much the gratification of a curiosity or a passion for worldly life, but something far less conditional. I do not wish to go out into the world with an insurance policy in my pocket guaranteeing my return in the event of a disappointment, like some cautious traveller who would be content with a brief glimpse of the world. On the contrary, I desire that there should be hazards, difficulties and dangers to face; I am hungry for reality, for tasks and deeds, and also for privation and suffering."
"The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another."
"Student is not a container you have to fill but a torch you have to light up."
"One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him."
"God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism."
"Love of God," he said slowly, searching for words, "is not alwaysthe same as love of good, I wish it were that simple. We know whatis good, it is written in the Commandments. But God is notcontained only in the Commandments, you know; they are only aninfinitesimal part of Him. A man may abide by the Commandmentsand be far from God."
"And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth."
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
"Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."
"Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions demanded by work become easier and simpler where they are made not in the fear of men but only in the sight of God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work."
"To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them."
"The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part."
"I know I am talking nonsense, but I'd rather go rambling on, and partly expressing something I find it difficult to express, than to keep on transmitting faultless platitudes."
"Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness."
"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost."
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