German Author Quotes

Bertolt Brecht

Novalis

Thomas Mann

Hermann Hesse

Heinrich Böll

E. T. A. Hoffmann

Herta Müller

One of the main reasons why the sciences are so poor is that they imagine they are so rich. It isn't their job to throw open the door to infinite wisdom but to put a limit to infinite error.

Galileo speaking

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.

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

Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.

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

For many call Thee Father, who
Will not own me as brother too.

Walther von der Vogelweide

Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no struck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes.

Frank Schätzing

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.

"He does seem rather weird," was Hans Castorp's view. "Some of the things he said were very queer: it sounded as if he meant to say that the sun revolves round the earth."

To live in a place where I am not, and in a time that is either past or not yet come.

Heinrich von Kleist

It is only the strong who are strengthened by suffering; the weak are made weaker.

Lion Feuchtwanger

Between dusk and dawn many a head has turned white. Who can believe it? And mine has not changed on all this long journey.

Wilhelm Müller

Only he who bestirs himself can advance spiritually. The fool who uses extraneous aids for this, in the form of the ready-made opinions of others, only walks his path as if on crutches, while ignoring his own healthy limbs.

When I hear the word "culture"... I reach for my pistol.

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!

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

No fight is harder than the struggle against the thing you want most to believe.

Oh! make me Thine forever;
And should I fainting be,
Lord! let me never, never,
Outlive my love to Thee!

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,—
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me.

And so the little girl grew up: her skin was as white as snow, her cheeks as rosy as the blood, and her hair as black as ebony.

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

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.

Erich Maria Remarque

In Europe, where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one's got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit.

Sybille Bedford