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Quotes by German Authors
"In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum."
"As we acquire more knowledge things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious."
"Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them."
"The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ."
"Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?"
"At thirty a man steps out of the darkness and wasteland of preparation into active life it is the time to show oneself, the time of fulfillment."
"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
"And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be?"
"But I need solitude--which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air."
"Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal."
"Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life time unenriched by experience creative endeavor enjoyment and suffering."
"Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science."
"Where a people prays, there is the hurch; and where the church is; there is never loneliness."
"Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy."
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
"A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it."
"Courage is the best slayer-courage which attacketh for in every attack there is the sound of triumph."
"Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine."
"Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies."
"I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench; - then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees. The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth."
"Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept "impure", is the crime par excellence against life--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life."
"Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
"No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject."
"There had been a quarrel, she had been hurt, had wept. Now it was over; now she sat still and waited. Life would go on. As with children. As with animals. If only you did not talk, did not make simple things complicated, did not turn your soul inside out."
"Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good."
"He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines."
"We have to be careful that in throwing out the devil, we don't throw out the best part of ourselves."
"Paul has no intention to instruct the Christian community about the task and responsibility of government. His entire concern is with the responsibility of the Christian community towards the State."
"I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway."
"Our knowledge of life is limited to death."
"That the other suffers has to be learned, and it can never be learned fully."
"This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself, think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy."
"Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you."
"Only by the aid of language does reason bring about its most important achievements, namely the harmonious and consistent action of several individuals, the planned cooperation of many thousands, civilization, the State; and then, science, the storing up of previous experience, the summarizing into one concept of what is common, the communication of truth, the spreading of error, thoughts and poems, dogmas and superstitions. The animal learns to know death only when he dies, but man consciously draws every hour nearer his death; and at times this makes life a precarious business, even to the man who has not already recognized this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life itself."
"Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own."
"A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles."
"The drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imaginesuch a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference " perhaps,indeed, we too are unrequited lovers."
"As long as you're in the food business, why not make sweets?"
"Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do."
"Human nature has nevertheless been changed by the ever new appearance of these teachers of the purpose of existence: It now has one additional need-the need for the ever new appearance of such teachers and teachings of a "purpose. Gradually, man has become a fantastic animal that has to fulfill one more condition of existence than any other animal: man has to believe, to know, from time to time why he exists; his race cannot flourish without a periodic trust in life-without faith in reason in life."
"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
"He was pleased with everything that he did and learned and the days and months passed quickly. But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions."
"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"
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