German Author Quotes

Bertolt Brecht

Novalis

Thomas Mann

Hermann Hesse

Heinrich Böll

E. T. A. Hoffmann

Herta Müller

Now as all the sciences are connected with each other, Philosophy is never completed. In a complete system of all the sciences will philosophy for the first time be made manifest.

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

Indian monks were the first to choose the garden as the proper setting for their lives, which were devoted to the
contemplation of the divine; but with a prophetic eye we may see that the garden will often be dedicated in a
like manner: at a later time Greek philosophers, and monks in early Christian days, will retire into their
gardens for united, yet silent, contemplation.

Marie-Luise Gothein

I want to make a summing up, brief and to the point, but thorough. I have never suppressed a word in my books out of regard for other people and their prejudices.

John Henry Mackay

To improve man - that's the beginning of all terror. Religion founders, totalitarians, self-righteous playwrights, ideologues, they always want the new man, the better one.

He who sees the dark future must also see death, and fear it alone.

Friedrich Hölderlin

When Lawrence first found a gentian, a big single blue one, I remember feeling as if he had a strange communion with it, as if the gentian yielded up its blueness, its very essence, to him. Everything he met had the newness of a creation just that moment come into being.

Frieda Lawrence

This isn't the end, and a beginning looks different. This is the moment in between, when everything still looks possible.

How can such a disproportionately large number of people have a definite, and unusually positive relationship to Mozart?

Wolfgang Hildesheimer

It is this ability to bear what is unbearable and to go on living, to go on doing what one is used to doing—it is this uncanny ability that the existence of the human species is based on.

When the tempest rages,
In the Rock of Ages
I will safely hide;
Though the earth be shaking,
And all hearts be quaking,
Christ is at my side.

Whatsoever Venus bids
Is a joy excelling,
Never in an evil heart
Did she make her dwelling.

A loyal-hearted man rejoices at a friend's advancement; a disloyal man cries out in sorrow when something pleasant befalls his friend and he is there to see it.

Wolfram von Eschenbach

What can I expect here? You know the fairy tale about the man who died, don't you? He was waiting in Eternity to find out what the Lord had decided to do with him. He waited and waited, for one year, ten years, a hundred years. He begged and pleaded for a decision. Finally he couldn't bear the waiting any longer. Then they said to him: 'What do you think you're waiting for? You've been in Hell for a long time already.

When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep.
Two stand here beside me,
Two stand there to guide me…
Two more light the path to heaven!

Often I am struck in amazement about a word: I suddenly realize that the complete arbitrariness of our language is but a part of the arbitrariness of our own world in general.

Christian Morgenstern

You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you've even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. For here to there it's all just the farty sputter of lantern. And they call that having lived. It's not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.

History and fiction must complement one another.

True love does not paralyze, but doubles the high qualities of man.

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?

What should I do if in fretful sleep
The ghosts of the slaughtered were to appear,
Bloody, pale, and wan, and weep
In front of me, what should I do?

Matthias Claudius

Wednesdays were the best thing about Atlantis. The middle of the week was a traditional holiday there. Everyone stopped work and celebrated the fact that half the week was over.

When it comes to clichés, the Germans are extremely diligent, efficient and disciplined about living up to them.

Rainer Erlinger

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

Berthold Auerbach

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.