Heinrich Heine
Silence can be defined as conversation with an EnglishmanCollection: Inspiration
Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.Collection: Flower
If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.Collection: Faith
Human misery is too great for men to die without faith.Collection: Faith
Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Oh, what lies there are in kisses!Collection: Lying
I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.Collection: Sadness
Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.Collection: Mean
Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.Collection: Historical
The propaganda of communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are simply hunger, envy, death.Collection: People
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupidCollection: Stupid
Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.Collection: Evil
Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.Collection: Inspirational Love
The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press.Collection: Archer
Thought is invisible nature.Collection: Invisible
Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.Collection: Sphinx
The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.Collection: Spiritual
God will forgive me the foolish remarks I have made about Him just as I will forgive my opponents the foolish things they have written about me, even though they are spiritually as inferior to me as I to thee, O God!Collection: Forgiveness
No compass has ever been invented for the high seas of matrimony.Collection: Marriage
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.Collection: Nature
The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather- beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.Collection: Thinking
I call'd the devil, and he came, And with wonder his form did I closely scan; He is not ugly, and is not lame, But really a handsome and charming man. A man in the prime of life is the devil, Obliging, a man of the world, and civil; A diplomatist too, well skill'd in debate, He talks quite glibly of church and state.Collection: Men
Every age thinks its battle the most important of all.Collection: Thinking
Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.Collection: Book
While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.Collection: Self Esteem
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling...Collection: Dream
Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time.Collection: Freedom
Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.Collection: Men
The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become madCollection: Real
But a day must come when the fire of youth will be quenched in my veins, when winter will dwell in my heart, when his snow flakes will whiten my locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper.Collection: Death
Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.Collection: Writing
Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.Collection: Nature
God will pardon: That's His business.Collection: Forgiveness
The sea appears all golden. Beneath the sun-lit sky.Collection: Ocean
It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.Collection: Beautiful
The violets prattle and titter, And gaze on the stars high above.Collection: Stars
Jews who long have drifted from the faith of their fathers... are stirred in their inmost parts when the old, familiar Passover sounds chance to fall upon their ears.Collection: Father
As the moon's fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion.Collection: Ocean
Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.Collection: Women
I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.Collection: Pride
Life is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity.Collection: Life
The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.Collection: Long
A lonely fir-tree is standing On a northern barren height; It sleeps, and the ice and snow-drift Cast round it a garment of white.Collection: Lonely
It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.Collection: Sympathy
You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world's goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are.Collection: Iron
The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel - and all of them are right.Collection: Night
The negro king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the poor African; for every man is but another negro king, and would like to appear in a color different from that with which Fate has bedaubed him.Collection: Kings
If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.Collection: Writing
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.Collection: Order