Quotes by German Authors - Page 20

It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more.
Hermann Hesse
The possibilities were endless. Battles would be fought. Wonders revealed. Many journeys. Many lands. Many joys. Many sorrows.But stories all...
William Joyce
Coldness in everything. It comes from a long way off; it gets into everything. One must get out of the way before it reaches the core. If it does that, one won't feel even the coldness any more. Do you see what I mean?
Christa Wolf
I came to England weak in body, and, in consequence of much study, as I suppose, I was taken ill on May 15, and was soon, at least in my own estimation, apparently beyond recovery. The weaker I became in body, the happier I was in spirit. Never in my whole life had I seen myself so vile, so guilty, so altogether what I ought not to have been, as at this time. It was as if every sin of which I had been guilty was brought to my remembrance; but at the same time I could realize that all my sins were completely forgiven—that I was washed and made clean, completely clean, in the blood of Jesus. The result of this was great peace. I longed exceedingly to depart and be with Christ. When my medical attendant came to see me, my prayer was something like this: “Lord, Thou knowest that he does not know what is for my real welfare, therefore do Thou direct him.” When I took my medicine, my hearty prayer each time was something like this: “Lord, Thou knowest that this medicine is in itself nothing, no more than as if I were to take a little water. Now please, O Lord, to let it produce the effect which is for my real welfare, and for Thy glory. Let me either be taken soon to Thyself, or let me be soon restored; let me be ill for a longer time, and then taken to Thyself, or let me be ill for a longer time, and then restored. O Lord, do with me as seemeth Thee best!
George Müller
Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Walter Benjamin
The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.
Ernst Jünger
I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread
Charles Bukowski
For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the "riddles of the universe," or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man. Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races. The appeal of both to large masses was so strong that they were able to enlist state support and establish themselves as official national doctrines. But far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.
Hannah Arendt
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
...only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.
Paul Tillich
You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.
Hermann Hesse
What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.
Hermann Hesse
The traditional, correct pre-Marxist view on exploitation was that of radical laissez-faire liberalism as espoused by, for instance, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. According to them, antagonistic interests do not exist between capitalists, as owners of factors of production, and laborers, but between, on the one hand, the producers in society, i.e., homesteaders, producers and contractors, including businessmen as well as workers, and on the other hand, those who acquire wealth non-productively and/or non-contractually, i.e., the state and state-privileged groups, such as feudal landlords.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Belane, are you nuts?"Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?
Charles Bukowski
International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It's about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what you are told in history lessons.
Egon Bahr
all people start tocome apart finallyand there it is:just empty ashtrays in a roomor wisps of hair on a combin the dissolving moonlight.
Charles Bukowski
The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.
Friedrich von Schiller
Who dares nothing need hope for nothing.
Friedrich von Schiller
Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
Love is not only pure joy, and delight, but also great and deep heaviness of heart and sorrow. But love too is full of joy and sweetness even in bitter sorrow, because it regards the misery and injury of others as its own. So also Christ was glowing with burning love in His last and greatest agony. According to St. Hilary, it was Christ's greatest joy that He endured the greatest woe. Thus God "giveth strength and power unto His people" (Ps. 68:15). While they experience the greatest sorrow, their hearts overflow with joy.
Martin Luther
O how quickly passes away the glory of the earth.
Thomas à Kempis
A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Happy is he who learns to bear what he cannot change!
J. C. F. von Schiller
If my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.
Deborah Feldman
The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness...those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misuing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear...it is precisely such misuse of community that creates deadly isolation of human beings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
If God were willing to sell His grace, we would accept it more quickly and gladly than when He offers it for nothing.
Martin Luther
Wake up! You’re a sacred soul and glory is yours for the taking.
Stefan Emunds
Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional...If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'.
Friedrich Nietzsche
All who call on God in true faith earnestly from the heart will certainly be heard and will receive what they have asked and desired.
Martin Luther
Hatred comes from the heart contempt from the head and neither feeling is quite within our control.
Arthur Schopenhauer
No, not of course at all—it is really all hocus-pocus. The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, toward winter. You call that ‘of course’; but if one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite frightening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a practical joke—that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and autumn at the beginning of summer. You feel you’re being fooled, led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration of motion, and eternity turns out to be not ‘straight ahead’ but ‘merry-go-round’!
Thomas Mann
And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A marijuana high can enhance core human mental abilities. It can help you to focus, to remember, to see new patterns, to imagine, to be creative, to introspect, to empathically understand others, and to come to deep insights. If you don’t find this amazing you have lost your sense of wonder. Which, by the way, is something a high can bring back, too.
Sebastian Marincolo
There are plenty of chances in life, what's important is what you make of them.
Katja Michael
Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.
Felix Adler
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
Charles Bukowski
If we cannot live so as to be happy let us at least live so as to deserve it.
Immanuel Hermann von Fichte
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced
Albert Einstein
0 true and heavenly grace, without which our own merits are nothing, and our natural gifts of no account! Neither arts nor riches, beauty nor strength, genius nor eloquence have any value in Your eyes, Lord, unless allied to grace. For the gifts of nature are common to good men and bad alike, but grace or love are Your especial gift to those whom You choose, and those who are sealed with this are counted worthy of life everlasting.
Thomas à Kempis
I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.
Albert Einstein
That's just the trouble, you make an effort to think about it. Concentrate entirely on your breathing, as if you had nothing else to do!
Master (Eugen Herrigel)
I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.
Charles Bukowski
You’re an immortal, divine being. A little god, and yet, you toil like a slave. Isn’t that hilarious?
Stefan Emunds
One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
E. E. Schumacher
what is new in his theories is not true, and what is true in his theories is not new.
Hans Jürgen Eysenck
Enemies are people who's story you haven't heard, or who's face you haven't seen.
Irene Butter
O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future — verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves — that shall constitute your new honor.
Friedrich Nietzsche
God is clever but not dishonest.
Albert Einstein
Which is better: to dare to look directly into the blinding present, no matter how painful, or to await the detachment of hindsight -- which, being less painful, is more objective?
Thomas Buergenthal
Here in this endless and gleaming wildernessI was removed farther than ever from the world of men --And I never saw so close and so clearlyThe image in the mirror of my own soul.
Hermann Hesse
All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils. I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face. And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much so I am asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test! I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I slept.
Charles Bukowski
Honestly, I never really understood the glorification of Fridays & weekends. I don't want to build a life and career, where I spent five days a week waiting for the weekend. No! I want to enjoy my life, and don't wish any weekday away. I want each day to matter to me, in some way, even if it's a small tiny way. I love my life. Everyday. That's the spirit we should convey all around us.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein
There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe