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Quotes by German Authors
"Sometimes she walks through the village in herlittle red dressall absorbed in restraining herself,and yet, despite herself, she seems to moveaccording to the rhythm of her life to come.She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,half-turns around...and, all while dreaming, shakes her headfor or against.Then she dances a few stepsthat she invents and forgets,no doubt finding out that lifemoves on too fast.It's not so much that she steps outof the small body enclosing her,but that all she carries in herselffrolics and ferments.It's this dress that she'll rememberlater in a sweet surrender;when her whole life is full of risks,the little red dress will always seem right."
"Psychology has falsified love as surrender and altruism, while it is an appropriation or a bestowal following from a super-abundance of personality. Only the most complete persons can love. The depersonalized and objective are the worst lovers."
"I bear within me the seed, the rudiments, the possibility of life's capacities and endeavors. Where might I be, if I were not here? Who, what, how could I be, if I were not me, if this outward appearance that is me did not encase me, separating my consciousness from that of others who are not me? An organism-a blind, rash, pitiful eruption of the insistent assertion of the will. Far better, really, if that will were to drift free in a night without time or space, than to languish in a prison cell lit only by the flickering, uncertain flame of the intellect."
"In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew."
"The question that sometime's drive's me hazy, am i or the other's crazy?"
"Personality is everything in art and poetry."
"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people."
"Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?"
"Sometimes we owe a friend to the lucky circumstance that we give him no cause for envy."
"The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for."
"Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow."
"All things are only transitory."
"Information is not knowledge."
"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
"Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these."
"Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinize themselves. For only he who is man enough will save the woman in woman."
"Everything has changed. . . except the way we think. The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of community their highest life problems."
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
"Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us."
"If we are to pray aright perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer not the poverty of our heart."
"He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary."
"I teach you beyond Man (superman). Man is something that shall be surpassed. What have you done to surpass him?"
"If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own."
"Sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day."
"Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader."
"No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck."
"It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."
"I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several."
"This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race..."
"I would like to sing someone to sleep,to sit beside someone and be there.I would like to rock you and sing softlyand go with you to and from sleep.I would like to be the one in the housewho knew: The night was cold.And I would like to listen in and listen outinto you, into the world, into the woods.The clocks shout to one another striking,and one sees to the bottom of time.And down below one last, strange man walks byand rouses a strange dog.And after that comes silence.I have laid my eyes upon you wide;and they hold you gently and let you gowhen something stirs in the dark."
"How can we "find ourselves again? How can man "know himself? He is a thing obscure and veiled. If the hare has seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven skins, and not be able to say: "Here you truly are; there is skin no more.Also this digging into oneself, this straight, violent descent into the pit of one's being, is a troublesome and dangerous business to start. You may easily take such hurt, that no doctor can heal you. And what is the point: since everything bears witness to our essence - our friendships and enmities, our looks and greetings, our memories and forgetfulnesses, our books and our writing!"
"The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man's interpretation of his life and struggles."
"We want it visible to showwhen even the most visible joy will reveal itselfonly when we have transformed it within.there's nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within."
"Why was it, do you think, I was able to recognise you and understand you?""Why, Hermine? Tell me!""Because it's the same for me as you because I am alone exactly as you are, because I'm as little fond of life and people and myself as you are and can put up with them as little. There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness."
"And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything."
"What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men."
"I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its "problems" because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego."
"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more."
"The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe the universe is friendly."
"Hope that justice will be done to those brave men who stood up for their convictions."
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