Quotes by German Authors - Page 36

The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new [people] and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope.
Hannah Arendt
A lot of bands make two different music videos for their latest songs. A censored version for American TV, and an uncensored version that includes nudity for European music stations. The so-called Land of The Free doesn't seem so free anymore, when you realize that other countries have a lot more freedom.
Oliver Markus Malloy
the people are the biggesthorror show on earth,have been forcenturies.
Charles Bukowski
Repentance is the gateway through which the Gospel can come to us. Repentance is the gateway to a joy-filled life with Christ, for it is the prerequisite for attaining forgiveness, and wherever forgiveness is received, there is salvation and joy.
M. Basilea Schlink
Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Actually, what does man live for?”“To think about it. Any other question?” “Yes. Why does he die just when he has done that and has become a bit more sensible?” “Some people die without having become more sensible.”“Don’t evade my question. And don’t start talking about the transmigration of souls.” “I’ll ask you something else first. Lions kill antelopes; spiders flies; foxes chickens; which is the only race in the world that wars on itself uninterruptedly, fighting and killing one another?” “Those are questions for children. The crown of creation, of course, the human being— who invented the words love, kindness, and mercy.” “Good. And who is the only being in Nature that is capable of committing suicide and does it?” “Again the human being— who invented eternity, God, and resurrection.”“Excellent,” Ravic said. “You see of how many contradictions we consist. And you want to know why we die?
Erich Maria Remarque
Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
...the only way to judge a philosophy is to examine the lives of those who live it.
Karl Friedrich
Life belongs to the living and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Johann von Goethe
And when he is out of sight quickly also he is out of mind.
Thomas à Kempis
The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.
Marcus Speh
...your tranquil yes to the changing over into the formless void of the unlimited.
Hermann Hesse
As individuals express their life, so they are.
Karl Marx
On the lowest level, this loss of soul turns the man into the hen-pecked husband who lives with his wife as though she were his mother upon whom he is solely dependent in all things having to do with emotions and the inner life. But even the relatively positive case where the woman is the mistress of the inner domain and mother of the home who simultaneously has the responsibility for dealing with all the man's questions and problems having to do with emotions and the inner life, even this leads to a lack of emotional vitality and sterile one-sidedness in the man. He discharges only the "outer" and "rational" affairs of life, profession, politics, etc. Owing to his loss of soul, the world he has shaped becomes a patriarchal world that, in its soullessness, presents an unprecedented danger for humanity. In this context we cannot delve further into the significance of a full development of the archetypal feminine potential for a new, future society.
Erich Neumann
crawled like a blind slug into the web
Charles Bukowski
...and as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.
Hermann Hesse
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Montesquieu had the style of a genius Buffon the genius of style.
Baron Grimm
He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.(on Liszt)
Clara Schumann
There's too much coldness in the world," I told her. "If people would only talk things out together it would help.
Charles Bukowski
The fundamental principle of morality which we seek as a necessity for thought is not, however, a matter only of arranging and deepening current views of good and evil, but also of expanding and extending these. A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks. If he works by lamplight on a summer evening, he prefers to keep the window shut and to breathe stifling air, rather than to see insect after insect fall on his table with singed and sinking wings.
Albert Schweitzer
To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong full natures in whom there is an excess of power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget. Mirabeau had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot. Such a man shakes off with a single shrug the many vermin that eat deep into others.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. ... We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
Walter Benjamin
The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.
Pope Benedict XVI
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence
Albert Einstein
The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.
Josef Pieper
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality[,] consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than an abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.“Psychoanalysis and sociology.” Pp. 37-39 inCritical theory and society: A reader, edited by S. Bronner and D. Kellner. New York: Routledge.
Erich Fromm
Everyone hungers for a foretaste of heaven. The word "heaven" strikes a note in everyone's heart, for all men are Adam's children, driven out of paradise, but still cherishing a deep desire for the lost paradise.
M. Basilea Schlink
Ithink that theworld should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, justcats andrain, rain and cats, very nice, goodnight.
Charles Bukowski
Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!
Hermann Hesse
No, little one, George's ghost won't come back. Human beings don't have souls. No soul, no ghost. Simple.""How can you say that?" protested Mopple. "We don't know whether humans have souls or not.""Every lamb knows that your soul is in your sense of smell. And human beings don't have very good noses." Maude herself had an excellent sense of smell, and often thought about the problem of souls and noses."So you'd only see a very small ghost. Nothing to be afraid of.
Leonie Swann
For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write
Friedrich Nietzsche
Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.
Cornelia Funke
The craving for equality can express itself either as a desire to pull everyone down to our own level (by belittling them, excluding them, tripping them up) or as a desire to raise ourselves up along with everyone else (by acknowledging them, helping them, and rejoicing in their success).
Friedrich Nietzsche
The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people?Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?
Anne Frank
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.
Friedrich Nietzsche
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten but they may start a winning game.
Goethe
I have to hurry all day to get time to pray.
Martin Luther
When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King
In the Cross is salvation; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is protection against our enemies; in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of mind; in the Cross is joy of spirit; in the Cross is excellence of virtue; in the Cross is perfection of holiness. There is no salvation of soul, nor hope of eternal life, save in the Cross.
Thomas à Kempis
E = MC^2: Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
Albert Einstein
Three times Jan had been called to the colours (the army), but each time had been deferred because of his deplorable physical condition..when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change in posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal
Günter Grass
as long as there arehuman beings aboutthere is never going to beany peacefor any individualupon this earth (oranywhere elsethey mightescape to).all you can dois maybe grabten lucky minuteshereor maybe an hourthere.somethingis working toward youright now, andI mean youand nobody butyou.
Charles Bukowski
When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me.
Hermann Hesse
Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognized part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims.
Friedrich Max Müller
Even when I was caught in the web, I didn't give up hope. And as you see, I was right.
Michael Ende
That bloody bastard! That thrice accursed son of a bitch!
Cornelia Funke
Our words are often only vague, inadequate descriptions of our thoughts. Something gets lost in translation every time we try to express our thoughts in words. And when the other person hears our words, something gets lost in translation again, because words mean different things to different people. "A long time" may mean 10 hours to one person, but 10 days to another. So when a thought is formed in my brain, and my mouth expresses it in words, and your ears hear it, and your brain processes it, your brain and my brain never truly see exactly the same thing. Communication is always just an approximation.
Oliver Gaspirtz
A film which followed the code of the Hays Office to the strictest letter might succeed in being a great work of art, but not in a world in which a Hays Office exists.
Theodor W. Adorno
Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests
Karl Lagerfeld
Mind isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be.
Eckhart Tolle
I may be permitted, kind reader, to doubt whether you have ever been enclosed in a glass bottle, unless some vivid dream has teased you with such magical mishaps.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorities ("Sale permitted, reading prohibited!"). One shop sold nothing but 'half' works that broke off in the middle because their author had died while writing them; another specialised in novels whose protagonists were insects. I also saw a Wolperting shop that sold nothing but books on chess and another patronised exclusively by dwarfs with blond beards, all of whom wore eye-shades.
Walter Moers
Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbartThe human power is revealed by poetIl potere dell'umanità si rivela nel poeta
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Know all and you will pardon all.
Thomas à Kempis