top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by German Authors
"In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'."
"Already the ripening barberries are redAnd the old asters hardly breathe in their beds.The man who is not rich now as summer goesWill wait and wait and never be himself.The man who cannot quietly close his eyescertain that there is vision after vision inside,simply waiting for nighttimeto rise all around him in darkness-it's all over for him, he's like an old man.Nothing else will come; no more days will openand everything that does happen will cheat him.Even you, my God. And you are like a stonethat draws him daily deeper into the depths."
"Fortunately, no country was ever more suited for anarchist agitation than present-day America."
"Something similar is still true of the courses followed by manifold intuitions which together make up the unity of one continuous consciousness of one and the same object."
"It is nonsense to say that Germans are unable to change."
"But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility."
"He who matures early lives in anticipation."
"India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there."
"Tennis is a psychological sport, you have to keep a clear head. That is why I stopped playing."
"The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard."
"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."
"It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance; they stand like a sentinel at the gate leading out of this world. Perhaps there is no man alive who would not have already put an end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative character, a sudden stoppage of existence. There is something positive about it; it is the destruction of the body; and a man shrinks from that, because his body is the manifestation of the will to live."
"Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers."
"I would say about 80 to 90 percent of people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunction and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will know this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy."
"Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen."
"Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you."
"Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours."
"Those who still think listening isn't an art should see if they can do it half as well."
"Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm."
"The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism."
"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."
"A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the "value-forming substance", the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc."
"Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people."
"The sense organs experience the external light, sound, etc. with difficulty; the different sense organs only have a so-called specific receptivity for particular stimuli."
"At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards."
"Jesus does not impose intolerable restrictions on his disciples, he does not forbid them to look at anything, but bids them look on him. If they do that he knows that their gaze will always be pure, even when they look upon a woman."
"We should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus."
"In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head."
"It's so great to love somebody and, out of that, to make a child. So that's my goal."
"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise."
"We have to cease to think, if we refuse to do it in the prison house of language; for we cannot reach further than the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit."
"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
"Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state."
"Virtue is reason which has become energy."
"The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests."
"Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined."
bottom of page