Heinrich Heine (1797 – 1856)
Journalist, an essayist, and one of the most significant German romantic poets.
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.
Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself.
Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.
Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Every woman is the gift of a world to me.
The future smells of Russian leather, of blood, of godlessness and of much whipping. I advise our grandchildren to come into the world with very thick skin on their backs.
Don't send a poet to London.
At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it — but I did I bear it. The question remains: how?
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.
So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths —
But is that an answer?
Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.
There are more fools in the world than there are people.
It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.
If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle.
Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.