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Quotes by German Authors
"The right man is the one who seizes the moment."
"Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do something good?' Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: 'What is the will of God?"
"Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would never have come into existence--whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the external miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!--Vanitas vanitatum homo."
"Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying."
"Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends."
"A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it."
"Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free."
"A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly ... ; you steep your being in it; it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to the benumbed."
"God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred."
"I love the dark hours of my being.My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters,the days of my life, already lived,and held like a legend, and understood."
"Faith: not wanting to know what is true."
"Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud."
"God says Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours."
"Christ became our Brother in order to help us. Through him our brother has become Christ for us in the power and authority of the commission Christ has given him. Our brother stands before us the sign of the truth and the grace of God. He has been given to us to help us. He hears the confession of our sins in Christ's stead and he forgives our sins in Christ's name. He keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God."
"The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross."
"It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character."
"Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?"
"Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me."
"He brooded on how close destruction always was to all creatures, animals as well as humans, and he realized that there is nothing we can predict or know for certain in this world except death."
"What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd."
"Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests."
"It is glorious to become a learner again at my time of life."
"The person who waits upon moods in impoverished. If the painter only wanted to paint when in the mood for it, he would not get very far. In religion, as in art and science, along with the times of high excitement, there are times of sober work and practice. We must practice our communion with God, otherwise we will not find the right tone, the right word, the right language, when God surprises us with his presence."
"Men act in response to an outward situation, and on being presented with an opportunity to conform to a pattern. If the pattern gives licence to cruelty, so much the better. They take advantage of the licence so thoughtlessly, so thoroughly, that it becomes perfectly clear: the generality of mankind are only waiting for the chance, only waiting for outward circumstance to sanction brutality and allow them to be cruel and brutal to their heart's content."
"It is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless."
"We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts."
"The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen."
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
"A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized."
"To measure a man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator."
"Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret."
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
"The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains."
"Intelligent life on other planets? I'm not even sure there is on earth!"
"I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite."
"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."
"Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart."
"One always has time enough, if one will apply it well."
"Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack."
"Trust yourself, then you will know how to live."
"I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator."
"To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth. No error is harmless: sooner or later it will bring misfortune to him who harbours it. Therefore deceive no one, but rather confess ignorance of what you do not know, and leave each man to devise his own articles of faith for himself."
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