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Quotes by German Authors
"When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind."
"I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams. I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams. I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes; At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes.I hear you when the blows rise on high, with murmur deep. To tread the silent grove where wander I, When all's asleep."
"To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word."
"So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it."
"To do great things is difficult but to command great things is more difficult."
"We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?"
"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude. Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist a wonderful living side by side can grow up if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky."
"Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other."
"I want friends, not admirers. People who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile. The circle around me would be much smaller, but what does that matter, as long as they're sincere?"
"When we first got married, we made a pact. It was this: In our life together, it was decided I would make all of the big decisions and my wife would make all of the little decisions. For fifty years, we have held true to that agreement. I believe that is the reason for the success in our marriage. However, the strange thing is that in fifty years, there hasn't been one big decision."
"The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison."
"I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer."
"What you react to in another you strengthen within yourself."
"I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the problem."
"I regret what happened. I saw no other possibility to achieve my goal. It was not hooliganism."
"Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.Let it teach you Being.Let it teach you integrity - which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem."
"We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out."
"But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem."
"God loves his work and therefore wills to preserve it. Creation and preservation are two aspects of the one activity of God."
"If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore."
"Party domination and State leadership are concepts incompatible with one another."
"When I hear the word culture - I release the safety-catch of my Browning."
"Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name."
"This is the beginning of the end (talking about the war)... Everyone was saying... But the British Prime Minister said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Do you see the difference?"
"It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends."
"Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!"
"Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the business man."
"How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day."
"I realise that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers."
"And without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die."
"Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law..."
"I'm currently in the middle of a depression. I couldn't really tell you what set it off, but I think it stems from my cowardice, which confronts me at every turn."
"Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else."
"Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth."
"Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting."
"Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions."
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