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Quotes by German Authors
"We were united not only by political respect for each other, but also by deep mutual sympathy as people."
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes."
"As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins."
"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs, he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."
"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."
"Without troublesome work, no one can have any concrete, full idea of what pure mathematical research is like or of the profusion of insights that can be obtained from it."
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
"There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable."
"Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, ifhe is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast."
"Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own."
"Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession."
"The essential attribute of a new sense is, not the perception of external objects or influences which ordinarily do not act upon the senses, but that external causes should excite in it a new and peculiar kind of sensation different from all the sensations of our five senses."
"I had to realize that the use of samples has its rules, too."
"Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety."
"The Jews have never been ashamed of being Jews, whereas homosexuals have been stupid enough to be ashamed of their homosexuality."
"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."
"This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble."
"And I don't believe that melodramatic feelings are laughable - they should be taken absolutely seriously."
"About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy."
"Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything."
"The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods."
"I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards."
"Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity."
"But quite honestly, personally, I was much more concerned - I mean, there's not much I can do about my appearance obviously other than spending four hours in hair and makeup."
"Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future."
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."
"But because many endeavor to get knowledge rather than to live well, they are often deceived and reap little or no benefit from their labor."
"They all have tired mouthsand bright seamless souls.And a longing (as for sin)sometimes haunts their dreams.They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still,like many, many intervalsin his might and melody.Only when they spread their wingsare they wakers of a wind:as if God with his broad sculptor-hands leafed through the pagesin the dark book of the beginning."
"If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry."
"Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death."
"There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
"She became so important to them that they wondered how they had ever managed without her in the past. And the longer she stayed with them the more indispensable she became, so indispensable in fact that their one fear was that she might some day move on."
"A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness."
"Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations."
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