Heinrich Heine
My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.Collection: Beautiful
A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.Collection: Wise
A brainiac notices everything, an ignoramus comments about everything.Collection: Stupid
I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.Collection: Regret
Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.Collection: Book
Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.Collection: Miracle
The years keep coming and going, Men will arise & depart; Only one thing is immortal: The love that is in my heart.Collection: Heart
I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.Collection: Beautiful
From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom.Collection: Boredom
The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on; The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun.Collection: Light
Glow-worms on the ground are moving, As if in the torch-dance circling.Collection: Moving
Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.Collection: Beautiful
Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too.Collection: Book
She resembles the Venus de Milo: she is very old, has no teeth, and has white spots on her yellow skin.Collection: Sarcastic
I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.Collection: Dream
The people have no ear, either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for pianoforte playing and singing is thus all the more repulsive. There is nothing on earth more terrible than English music, except English painting.Collection: Passion
The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.Collection: Swans
Where words cease, there music begins.Collection: Music Is
But oh! the Latin!-Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. Lucky dogs! they already knew in their cradles the nouns ending in im. I on the contrary had to learn it by heart, in the sweat of my brow.Collection: Dog
I have smelt all the aromas there are in the fragrant kitchen they call Earth; and what we can enjoy in this life, I surely have enjoyed just like a lord!Collection: Happiness
Every woman is the gift of a world to me.Collection: World
Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.Collection: Art
Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.Collection: Literature
Laughter is wholesome. God is not so dull as some people make out. Did not He make the kitten to chase its tail.Collection: Laughter
He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.Collection: Lying
Oh what lies there are in kisses! And their guile so well prepared! Sweet the snaring is; but this is Sweeter still, to be ensnared.Collection: Sweet
The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night With comfort are downward gazing.Collection: Spring
I have a most peaceable disposition. My desires are for a modest hut, a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, very fresh milk and butter, flowers in front of my window and a few pretty trees by my door. And should the good Lord wish to make me really happy, he will allow me the pleasure of seeing about six or seven of my enemies hanged upon those trees.Collection: Peace
The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.Collection: Clever
Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.Collection: Law
Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.Collection: Humanity
The beauteous dragonfly's dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body's bright splendour, And also her figure so slender...Collection: Dancing
Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions.Collection: Nature
Don't send a poet to London.Collection: London
On the waves of the brook she dances by, The light, the lovely dragon-fly; She dances here, she dances there, The shimmering, glimmering flutterer fair. And many a foolish young beetle's impressed By the blue gauze gown in which she is dressed; They admire the enamel that decks her bright, And her elegant waist so slim and slight.Collection: Light
There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.Collection: Sarcastic
Phychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.Collection: Pain
There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.Collection: Style
Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy--death.Collection: Spiritual
Each violet peeps from its dwelling to gaze at the bright stars above.Collection: Stars
In vain would I seek to discover Why sad and mournful am I, My thoughts without ceasing brood over A tale of the time gone by.Collection: Gone
I do not murmur, even if my heart break.Collection: Heart
All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.Collection: Equality
I live! Red life boils in my veins, earth yields beneath my feet, in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives.Collection: Women
What lies lurk in kisses.Collection: Lying