Quotes by German Authors - Page 58

The way individuals live together. The truth of each individual is only the truth of his own narrow perspective. The entirety of mankind and of human qualities is always seen through a prisim, where its colours are broken. Observation is so utterly different from experinnce; there is no hope of fusing their contardictions, as the I and the not-I have been foes from the world's beginning.
Jakob Wassermann
It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..
Cornelia Funke
If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.
Robert Schumann
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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.
Ester Buchholz
You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.
Hermann Hesse
Maple thought optimistically that human beings, on their good days, weren't much dimmer than sheep. Or at least, not much dimmer than dim sheep.
Leonie Swann
In studying the psychological significance of a religious or political doctrine, we must first bear in mind that the psychological analysis does not imply a judgement concerning the truth of the doctrine one analyzes. This latter question can be decided only in terms of the logical structure of the problem itself.
Erich Fromm
for a man of 55 who didn't get laid until he was 23 and not very often until he was 50 I think that I should stay listed via Pacific Telephone until I get as much as the average man has had
Charles Bukowski
I am superior to you only in one point: I'm awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.
Hermann Hesse
Bodily and spiritual affliction are the surest sign of Divine predilection. Gratitude for suffering is a precious jewel for our heavenly crown... Man should always firmly believe that God sends just that trial which is most beneficial for him.
St. Gertrude the Great
All the girls I had ever loved were mine. Each gave me what she alone had to give and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take.
Hermann Hesse
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
Adolf Hitler
but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!
Anne Frank
I read like the flame reads the wood.
Alfred Döblin
With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.
Friedrich von Schiller
He's looking into the night, in case a shadow comes to listen and look.
Herta Müller
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.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Recollection of death also serves as a useful preparation for the time when one actually has to face death. As the concluding exercise among the body contemplations, a regular recollection of death can lead to the realization that death is fearful only to the extent to which one identifies with the body. With the aid of the body contemplations one can come to realize the true [impermanent] nature of the body and thereby overcome one's attachment to it. Being free from attachment to the body, one will be freed from any fear of physical death.
Anālayo
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
Albert Schweitzer
You may kill a fire. And everything you know falls to dust and ash. Yet the remarkable treasure in this seemingly hopeless pile, is hidden deep within. The burning embers incarnate the perpetual desire to go from spark to flame.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
There is a ghost That eats handkerchiefs It keeps you company On all your travels.
Christian Morgenstern
And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind of shock therapy — only it was never 'therapy.' They have smothered the first little flame of a man’s own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition. By such performances a person can really be smothered and strangled!
Helmut Thielicke
He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.
Patrick Süskind
One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has a custom them to obedience and experience has made them cautious in conversation with their teachers.
Catherine the Great
You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect.
Hermann Hesse
Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, has pointed the way. He was shown of what sacrifices people are capable once they have found the right way. His work for the liberation of India is a living testimony to the fact that a will governed by firm conviction is stronger than a seemingly invincible material power.
Albert Einstein
Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.
Cornelia Funke
The more narrow-minded a system is the more it will please worldly-wise people. Thus the system of the materialists, the doctrine of Helvetius and also Locke has recieved the most acclaim amongst his class. Thus Kant even now will find more followers than Fichte.
Novalis
Morality negates life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is often possible to decide the issue of a battle merely by making an unexpected shift of one's main weight.
Erwin Rommel
Who dares nothing need hope for nothing.
J. C. F. von Schiller
Lord, whatsoever this day may bring, Thy name be praised. Be gracious unto me and help me. Grant me strength to bear whatsoever Thou dost send, And let not fear overrule me. I trust Thy grace, and commit my life wholly into Thy Hands. Whether I live or whether I die, I am with Thee and Thou are with me … Lord, I wait for Thy salvation, and for the coming of Thy Kingdom. Amen.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God loves his work and therefore wills to preserve it. Creation and preservation are two aspects of the one activity of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they shall themselves recognize the tyranny, and understand their own liberty.
Martin Luther
If my efforts have led to greater success than usual, this is due, I believe, to the fact that during my wanderings in the field of medicine, I have strayed onto paths where the gold was still lying by the wayside. It takes a little luck to be able to distinguish gold from dross, but that is all.
Robert Koch
If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.
Hermann Hesse
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed
Arthur Schopenhauer
God is Santa Claus for Grown-Ups.
Oliver Markus
Communism, my dear," I said when I managed to get hold of a bunch of bananas for hers and let them ripen on the windowsill, given her just one each day so they'd last for a while
Alina Bronsky
It's possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature, or by knowledge of the past.
Adolf Hitler
When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.
Cornelia Funke
Nobody's immune to physics. I don't care how big and tough they are.
Marko Kloos
Those speak foolishly who ascribe their anger or their impatience to such as offend them or to tribulation. Tribulation does not make people impatient, but proves that they are impatient. So everyone may learn from tribulation how his heart is constituted.
Martin Luther
What befalls me couldn’t have missed me, and what misses me could not have befallen me.
Alexandra Burt
The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell...lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Wenn man nachts nicht schläft, werden Träume wahr.
Selim Özdogan
We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.
Hermann Hesse
A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It's the only dish I serve my craziness for color in.
Josef Albers
don’t be like so many writers,don’t be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don’t be dull and boring andpretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don’t add to that.don’t do it.
Charles Bukowski
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
Charles Bukowski
Oh, merciless freedom, you continue to overwhelm me! You demand that I challenge myself and feel ashamed, and yet continue to feel so outrageously proud to live a life full of my desires.
Nina George
Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell.
Charles Bukowski
I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,—but everything oppressed me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse dream reawakeneth out of his first sleep.—But there is something in me which I call courage: it hath hitherto slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: "Dwarf! Thou! Or I!"—For courage is the best slayer,—courage which attacketh: for in every attack there is sound of triumph.Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses: and where doth man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself—seeing abysses?Courage is the best slayer: courage slayeth also fellow-suffering. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering.Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacketh: it slayeth even death itself; for it saith: "Was that life? Well! Once more!
Friedrich Nietzsche
What early Christianity meant by 'faith' (pistis) was initially nothing other than running ahead and clinging to a model or idea whose attainability was still uncertain. Faith is purely anticipatory, in the sense that it already has an effect when it mobilizes the existence of the anticipatory towards the goal through anticipation. In analogy for the placebo effect, one would have to call this the movebo effect.
Peter Sloterdijk
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
Kurt Lewin
Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.
Friedrich Schiller