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Quotes by German Authors
"When we are only victorious over small things, it leaves us feeling small."
"Without Britain, Europe would remain only a torso."
"Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity."
"A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things."
"How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life - in short, without you, my life is no life. [Written to his wife, Mileva]"
"It happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an "assault upon society" and is branded as "Socialism."
"What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other. You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys."
"The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense."
"Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills)."
"The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of "eternity"; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book."
"Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being."
"Nothing happens until something moves."
"Some men are born posthumously."
"It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard."
"You darkness, that I come from,I love you more than all the firesthat fence in the world,for the fire makesa circle of light for everyone,and then no one outside learns of you.But the darkness pulls in everything:shapes and fires, animals and myself,how easily it gathers them! -powers and people -and it is possible a great energyis moving near me.I have faith in nights."
"And those, who come together in the night and are twined in quivering pleasure, are performing a serious work and are heaping up sweetness, depth and force for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to express inexpressible ecstasies."
"I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."
"The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!"
"Who loves not women wine and song Remains a fool his whole life long."
"But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil."
"As usual, I shall tell my story badly; and you, as usual, will think me extravagant."
"The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices."
"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."
"The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace."
"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough."
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
"Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value."
"The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer."
"The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person's dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man's ability to experience time-dreams, that is, whose imaginary time span vastly exceeds their actual duration and which are characterized by an incredible diminishment of the experience of time, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoke puts it, the intoxicated user's brain seems 'to have something removed, like the mainspring from a broken watch."
"But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write."
"Creativity is contagious. Pass it on."
"All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values."
"To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish."
"I was very pleased with your kind letter. Until now I never dreamed of being something like a hero. But since you've given me the nomination I feel that I am one."
"The framing of a problem is often far more essential than its solution."
"Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief on already has."
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