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Quotes by German Authors
"Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity."
"The beast lives unhistorically; for it 'goes into' the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder."
"Life is the childhood of our immortality."
"Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model."
"Becoming a father isn't difficult, but it's very difficult to be a father."
"I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking."
"Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline."
"He saw mankind going through life in a childlike manner... which he loved but also despised.... He saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to be entirely unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being slightly honoured."
"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies."
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
"I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself."
"Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to rest beneath."
"You go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. And he who flies is hated most of all."
"Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you."
"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
"Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?"
"Physicsis the philosophy of nature, so far as it is based on empirical laws."
"I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music."
"I know a beautiful garden, where there are a great many children in fine little coats, and they go under the trees and gather beautiful apples and pears, cherries and plums; they sing and run about and are as happy as they can be. Sometimes they ride on nice little ponies, with golden bridles and silver saddles. I asked the man whose garden it is, "What little children are these? And he told me, "They are little children who love to pray and learn and are good."
"The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity."
"I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university."
"Here I stand. I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen."
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it."
"Here is the time for the sayable, here is its home.Speak and attest. More than everthe things we can live with are falling away,and ousting them, filling their place, a will with no image.Will beneath crusts which readily crackwhenever the act inside swells and seeks new borders."
"Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man."
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.' Not only do the followers of Jesus renounce their rights, they renounce their own righteousness too. They get no praise for their achievements or sacrifices. They cannot have righteousness except by hungering and thirsting for it (this applies equally to their own righteousness and to the righteousness of God on Earth), always they look forward to the future righteousness of God, but they cannot establish it for themselves. Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way."
"But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy."
"Love should not be polluted with friendship."
"That is fundamentally the only courage which is demanded of us: to be brave in the face of the strangest, most singular and most inexplicable things that can befall us."
"Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare piA1 liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertA eterna."
"The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire.The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door."
"Character develops itself in the stream of life."
"It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it."
"I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time."
"The world is not divided between Christ and the devil; it is completely the world of Christ, whether it recognizes this or not. As this reality in Christ it is to be addressed, and thus the false reality that it imagines itself to have, in itself or in the devil, is to be destroyed. The dark, evil world may not be surrendered to the devil, but must be claimed for the one who won it by coming in the flesh, by the death and resurrection of Christ."
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