Heinrich Heine Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

The night comes stealing o'er me,
And clouds are on the sea;
While the wavelets rustle before me
With a mystical melody.

Heinrich Heine
Our sweetest hopes rise blooming. And then again are gone, They bloom and fade alternate, And so it goes rolling on. I know it, and it troubles My life, my love, my rest, My heart is wise and witty, And it bleeds within my breast.

Heinrich Heine
If thou lookest on the lime-leaf, Thou a heart's form will discover; Therefore are the lindens ever Chosen seats of each fond lover.

Heinrich Heine
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast, and when I carol aloud, I am answered by a thousand-fold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales. Spring hath sent them to awaken Earth from her morning slumber, and Earth trembles with ecstasy, her flowers are hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun...

Heinrich Heine
The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.

Heinrich Heine
Perhaps already I am dead, And these perhaps are phantoms vain;— These motley phantasies that pass At night through my disordered brain. Perhaps with ancient heathen shapes, Old faded gods, this brain is full; Who, for their most unholy rites, Have chosen a dead poet's skull...

Heinrich Heine
Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

Heinrich Heine
At Dresden on the Elbe, that handsome city,
Where straw hats, verses, and cigars are made,
They've built (it well may make us feel afraid,)
A music club and music warehouse pretty.

Heinrich Heine
Life is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity...

Heinrich Heine
The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.

Heinrich Heine
The cloudlets are lazily sailing O'er the blue Atlantic sea; And mid the twilight there hovers A shadowy figure o'er me...

Heinrich Heine
Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions.

Heinrich Heine
Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers.

Heinrich Heine
At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.

Heinrich Heine
Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy--death.

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine
A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

Heinrich Heine
The eyes of spring, so azure, Are peeping from the ground; They are the darling violets, That I in nosegays bound.

Heinrich Heine
In blissful dream, in silent night, There came to me, with magic might, With magic might, my own sweet love, Into my little room above.

Heinrich Heine
The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night With comfort are downward gazing.

Heinrich Heine
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...

Heinrich Heine
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.

Heinrich Heine