Quotes by German Authors - Page 99

Among today's adept practitioners, the lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion. The lie, once a liberal means of communication, has today become one of the techniques of insolence enabling each individual to spread around him the glacial atmosphere in whose shelter he can thrive.
Theodor W. Adorno
As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. [This] clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element.
Ernst Haeckel
Perception is reality.
Carsten K. Rath
When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ then we pray correctly.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities and be caught in so-called reality, then I would rather die.
Hermann Hesse
Ibn Mas'ud said that Allah's Messenger said: Abusing a Muslim is sinful and fighting with his tantamount to Kufr. Bukhari Muslim
Ahmad Von Denffer
The silence leans forward.
Saša Stanišić
Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.
Herta Müller
An empty bus hurtles through the starry nightPerhaps the driver is singingand happy because he sings.
Günter Grass
Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Once a man takes honesty as his ideal, he cannot confine himself to showing to pleasant and reasonable side of his nature.
Hermann Hesse
We know accurately only when we know little with knowledge doubt increases.
Goethe
Love goes through all times
Kerstin Gier
Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.
Thomas Mann
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Albert Einstein
There are situations of course that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things. Words, too, can't do more than just evoke things. That's where dance comes in again.
Pina Bausch
There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men but austere perseverance harsh and continuous may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
Johann von Goethe
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.
Martin Luther
If the whole world I once could seeOn free soil stand, with the people freeThen to the moment might I say,Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.
Eckhart Tolle
Anything in the world can be endured, except a series of wonderful days.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
Eckhart Tolle
If you've never done anything wrong it's probably because you have never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
You had an image of life inside you, a belief or an ideal, that you were ready to do good deeds, to suffer, and to sacrifice – and by degrees you noticed that the world had no need of your good deeds, or sacrifices, and such like; that life was not an heroic tale, with roles for heroes, and such like, but a comfortable bourgeois parlour, where one is perfectly satisfied with eating and drinking, coffee and knitted stockings, tarot readings and music on the radio. And he who wants otherwise and has the heroic and the beautiful inside him, the veneration of great poets or the adoration of saints inside him, he is a fool and a knight errant, a latter day Don Quixote?
Hermann Hesse
When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun.
Hans Johst
The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have always done, spreading the light of the Lord ... and transforming the world into a welcoming home for everyone.
Pope Benedict XVI
These two developments throw light on what is perhaps the most fundamental difference between the Renaissance and all previous periods of art. We have repeatedly seen that there were these circumstances which could compel the artist to make a distinction between the "technical" proportions and the "objective;" the influence of organic movement, the influence of perspective foreshortening, and the regard for the visual impression of the beholder. These three factors of variation have one thing in common: they all presuppose the artistic recognition of subjectivity. Organic movement introduces into the calculus of artistic composition the subjective will and the subjective emotions of the thing represented; foreshortening the subjective visual experience of the artist; and those "eurhythmic" adjustments which alter that which is right in favor of what seems right, the subjective visual experience of a potential beholder. And it is the Renaissance which, for the first time, not only affirms but formally legitimizes and rationalizes these three forms of subjectivity.
Erwin Panofsky
The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world.
Alexander von Humboldt
Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? . . . No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.
Pope Benedict XVI
How quick we are to reject what others tell us! How fast we are to cast the blame on others, saying they always criticize us and find fault with us, they are not satisfied with anything we do, they do not understand us.But if we cannot accept anything others tell us, we are proud. The humble want to hear what others tell them. They have the courage to hear the truth about themselves and to admit that they need to change. Whether it is a small matter or a big matter, they say, "Yes, it is true. I need to turn over a new leaf.
M. Basilea Schlink
Wild animals bite the hand that feeds them. Clever people consume the entire body.
Stefan Emunds
(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects whether moral or intellectual shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The eternal child. - We think that play and fairy tales belong to childhood:how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time of life tolive without play and fairy tales! We give these things other names, to besure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidencethat they are the same things - for the child too regards play as his workand fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from apedantic division of life into different stages - as though each broughtsomething new - and a poet ought for once to present a man of twohundred: one, that is, who really does live without play and fairy tales.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena
Friedrich Nietzsche
Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[His research into biblical criticism had lead him to the conclusion that most of what was contained in traditional religion simply wasn't true]Was I to lie in order to teach the truth? ...Was I to repeat these words? It was impossible. It was certain they would stick in my throat. On these grounds the separation was decided by me.
Felix Adler
New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.
Max Planck
Information is not knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research, however, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. Instead of researching the syntax of Ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for $100 grand a year, they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for $20 grand.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
He who has no opinion of his own but depends upon the opinion and taste of others is a slave.
Friedrich Klopstock
I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me.
Charles Bukowski
Morality is not man's prison but rather the divine element in him.
Pope Benedict XVI
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
Albert Einstein
In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it and others do just the same with their time.
Johann von Goethe
In the true man there is a child concealed - who wants to play.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Arguing is a waste of time, because our attitudes need a quantum leap, not our knowledge. Arguing is a sport at best and a bad attitude at worst.
Stefan Emunds
The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.
Josef Pieper
Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- then why not the satisfaction and the act itself? As the days went on, I discovered that I couldn't stop thinking sinful thoughts. In which case I also wanted the sin itself.
Bernhard Schlink
Dove la moralità è troppo forte l'intelletto perisce.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.
Rolf Hochhuth
As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today's children of the banalized Enlightenment are likewise meant to burn what they worshipped and worship what they burned.
Peter Sloterdijk
Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.[Carnap’s famous plea for tolerance to which W.V. Quine took exception.]
Rudolf Carnap
my 6 foot goddessmakes me laughthe laughter of the mutilatedwho still needlove...she has saved mefrom everything that isnot here
Charles Bukowski
Nature reacts not only to physical disease but also to moral weakness when the danger increases she gives us greater courage.
Johann von Goethe
Children are gentle and heed. Adults are tough and seize. Wise men and women have the strength and flexibility to do what's right.
Stefan Emunds
A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.
Erich Fromm