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Quotes by German Authors
"The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens."
"The tragedy in a man's life is what dies inside of him while he lives."
"You don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too."
"He who laughs best today, will also laughs last."
"But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland."
"Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend."
"Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that 'a quiet conscience makes one strong!'"
"A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society."
"I think it takes people to get to know you and the recognition comes over time."
"Because paper has more patience than people."
"I said, 'Wouldn't it be great if Matt Damon's character fell in love with a girl with a real butt?' They were like, 'Yeah sure, sure - here's your personal trainer.'"
"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs, he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."
"I think it's odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it."
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."
"Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny locksmith of our own age, the biggest eater of the company. He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way; Haie Westhus, of the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a ration-loaf in his hand and say: Guess what I've got in my fist; then Detering, a peasant, who thinks of nothing but his farm-yard and his wife; and finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs."
"Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the rule."
"Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse - a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public."
"The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it."
"Our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life."
"Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other."
"If you don't do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide."
"People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights."
"We must take care that globalization does not become something people become afraid of."
"Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go."
"Always say 'yes' to the present moment... Surrender to what is. Say 'yes' to life - and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you."
"Solitude has seven skins, nothing gets through any more."
"God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight."
"Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery."
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
"Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending."
"Love's cruel notion. - Every great love brings with it the cruel idea of killingthe object of that love, so that he may be removed once and for all fromthe wicked game of change: for love dreads change more than it doesdestruction."
"The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied."
"Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me."
"Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible."
"But the God of the Bible is not only One, but the only possible One."
"When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind."
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