Quotes by German Authors - Page 80

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.
Werner Herzog
there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.
Hannah Arendt
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.
Edith Hamilton
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
Albert Schweitzer
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A God-intoxicated man.
Novalis
The purpose of life is life.
Karl Lagerfeld
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive
Albert Einstein
The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.
Eugen Herrigel
While progressing in this way, with a dirty street ahead of him and a clean one behind, he often had grand ideas. They were ideas that couldn't easily be put into words, though - ideas as hard to define as a half-remembered scent or a colour seen in a dream.
Michael Ende
Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow
It may seem odd to say that the men who made the myths disliked the irrational and had a love for facts; but it is true, no matter how wildly fantastic some of the stories are...
Edith Hamilton
Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this
Friedrich Nietzsche
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Being rejected by someone you knew you never stood a chance with is like pouring salt on a wound that already has salt in it. It preserves the hurt.
Maria G. Cope
The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is indeed a species of sagacity-a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.
Johann von Goethe
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.
Max Stirner
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
Arthur Schopenhauer
While the Eternal Feminine in Faust II still appears in personalized form as the Madonna, she works her effects in The Magic Flute as an invisible spiritual power, as music. But this music is the expression of divine love itself, which unites law and freedom, above and below, in the wisdom of the heart and of love. As harmony, it grants humankind divine peace and rules the world as the highest divinity.From the earliest times, magic and music have stood under the rule of the Archetypal Feminine, which in myth and fairy tale is also the mistress of transformation, intoxication, and enchanting sound. Thus it is quite understandable that it is precisely this feminine principle that bestows the magical instruments. The Orpheus motif of the magical taming of the animal energies through music belongs to her, for as mistress of the animals the Great Goddess rules the world of wild as well as tame creatures. She can transform things and people into animal form, tame the animal, and enchant it because, like music, she is able to make the tame wild and the wild tame with the power of her magic.
Erich Neumann
hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.
Charles Bukowski
Eyes and ears are not the problem... It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid.
Jan-Philipp Sendker
A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
Erich Maria Remarque
And if the characters haven't died, they carry on murdering to this very day ...
Rebekka Kricheldorf
There's in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again
Anne Frank
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
Thomas Mann
When a person feels that he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make sense of it in terms of the life of his children. But one is bound to fail within oneself and for the children. The former because the problem of existence can be solved by each one only for himself, and not by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualities which one needs to guide the children in their own search for an answer.
Erich Fromm
Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has even been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh--one might well ponder what kind of problem it is; Napoleon this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman
Friedrich Nietzsche
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
Bertolt Brecht
One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old... and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening.
Hermann Hesse
When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,—is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go?
Arthur Schopenhauer
There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.
Martin Luther
Sin is what is new, strong, surprising, strange. The theatre must take an interest in sin if the young are to be able to go there.
Bertolt Brecht
In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a 'nine to fiver', he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organisation of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organisation, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinised in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theatre owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinised, and prefabricated. How should a man caught up in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and separateness?
Erich Fromm
Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.
Albert Schweitzer
[Hegel’s] system of nature seemed, at least to natural philosophers, absolutely crazy….Hegel…launched out with particular vehemence and acrimony against the natural philosophers, and especially against Isaac Newton. The philosophers accused the scientific men of narrowness; the scientific men retorted that the philosophers were insane.
Hermann von Helmholtz
War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity it destroys religion it destroys states it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.
Martin Luther
Better know nothing than half-know many things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Being must be 'felt' it can not be 'thought.
Eckhart Tolle
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
Bertolt Brecht
Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?
Anne Frank
There is more to life than just existing and having a pleasant time.
J. C. F. von Schiller
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
Albert Einstein
Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.
Carl Schmitt
love as a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He that is overcautious will accomplish little.
Friedrich von Schiller
Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence with the certainty of losing it at last.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.
Eckhart Tolle
No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and prepared to assume responsibilities.
William J. H. Boetcker
The Russian commands sound like the name of the camp commandant. Shishtvanyanov: a gnashing and spluttering collection of ch, sh, tch, shch. We can't understand the actual words, but we sense the contempt. You get used to contempt. After a while the commands just sound like a constant clearing of the throat—coughing, sneezing, nose blowing, hacking up mucus. Trudi Pelikan said: Russian is a language that's caught a cold.
Herta Müller
Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.
Paul Tillich
Money is human happiness in the abstract he then who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Arthur Schopenhauer
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
Hermann Hesse
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
Martin Luther
The 'free' laborer, thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e. is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his birthright for a mass of pottage.
Karl Marx
Never judge people based on their nationality, religion, race, gender, skin colour or look. Humans are all the same. They’re God’s loving children." Angel of Hope
Lily Amis
Try not to seek after the trueOnly cease to cherish opinions. (172)
Edward Conze
Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert