E. T. A. Hoffmann Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
How prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?

E. T. A. Hoffmann
The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?

E. T. A. Hoffmann
I may be permitted, kind reader, to doubt whether you have ever been enclosed in a glass bottle, unless some vivid dream has teased you with such magical mishaps.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
It is only in the morning that one should marry, read unfavourable reviews, make one's will, beat one's servants, and so forth.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?

E. T. A. Hoffmann
Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won't help you.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
Everything here below beneath the sun is subject to continual change; and perhaps there is nothing which can be called more inconstant than opinion, which turns round in an everlasting circle like the wheel of fortune. He who reaps praise today is overwhelmed with biting censure tomorrow; today we trample under foot the man who tomorrow will be raised far above us.

E. T. A. Hoffmann
The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our bosoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches!

E. T. A. Hoffmann