Quotes by German Authors - Page 19

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A film which followed the code of the Hays Office to the strictest letter might succeed in being a great work of art, but not in a world in which a Hays Office exists.
Theodor W. Adorno
Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception... as film is able to do today... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism.
Walter Benjamin
[Cinema]… obeys the laws of the mind rather than those of the outer world.
Hugo Munsterberg
For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.
Werner Herzog
Certain directors and actors were constantly preoccupied by one problem, and apparently, one only. This was connected with the so-called German greeting, which was the method of hailing a friend by raising the right arm straight out with the hand extended at, or slightly above, the level of the shoulder. This greeting had very definite political implications; it was employed daily by millions; and the directors and actors saw no reason why it should not be one on the films in a simple and life-like fashion. They failed. Even when shown in the rushes the effect on the select and professional audience was simply to produce uncontrollable hilarity. The cinema can do a great deal. It can entrance, t can tell fairy tales, it can be realistic or surrealistic -- but it cannot portray a gesture that is false without underlining the most brutal way its basic falseness. The German cinema could not reproduce the German greeting; it was the greeting that was to blame, not the cinema.
Ernst von Salomon
people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.
Charles Bukowski
Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?
Werner Herzog
Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love.
Max Scheler
The ultimate goal of the arriviste’s aspirations is not to acquire a thing of value, but to be more highly esteemed than others. He merely uses the “thing” as an indifferent occasion for overcoming the oppressive feeling of inferiority which results from his constant comparisons.
Max Scheler
Still am I the richest and most to be envied - I, the lonesomest one!
Friedrich Nietzsche
To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The best or nothing at all.
Gottlieb Daimler
There is always a solution to every problem! Fishy
Lily Amis
When the world is at peace, when all things are tranquil and all men obey their superiors in all their courses, then music can be perfected. When desires and passions do not turn into wrongful paths, music can be perfected. Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos.
Hermann Hesse
In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility. The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behaviour must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
...if I only knew how much longer we had to put up with each other's company, I'd start counting the days.
Anne Frank
You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
...we are concluding falsely that we can deduce the justification, the rational admissibility of displeasure, from the fact that it exists; and from this false deduction Schopenhauer arrives at his fantastic conclusion of so-called intelligible freedom. But displeasure after the deed need not be rational at all: in fact, it certainly is not rational, for it rests on the erroneous assumption that the deed did not have to follow necessarily. Thus, because he thinks he is free (but not because he is free), man feels remorse and the pangs of conscience.Furthermore, this displeasure is a habit that can be given up; many men do not feel it at all, even after the same actions that cause many other men to feel it. Tied to the development of custom and culture, it is a very changeable thing, and present perhaps only within a relatively short period of world history.No one is responsible for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is to be unjust. This is also true when the individual judges himself. The tenet is as bright as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to walk back into the shadow and untruth - for fear of the consequences.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.
Karl Marx
No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
Erich Maria Remarque
Life is too precious to be left to chance
Walter Moers
With hard men intimacy is a thing of shame- and something precious.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It's in giving yourself that you possess yourself
Lou Andeas-Salome
To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something precious.
Friedrich Nietzsche
God has prepared for Himself one great song of praise throughout eternity, and those who enter the community of God join in this song. It is the song that the “morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” at the creation of the world. (Job 38:7). It is the victory song of the children of Israel after passing through the Red Sea, the Magnificat of Mary after the annunciation, the song of Paul and Silas in the night of prison, the song of the singers on the sea of glass after their rescue, the “song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Rev. 15:3) It is the song of the heavenly fellowship.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.
Rosmarie Waldrop
Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy.
Erich Maria Remarque
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein
There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Todo o reino de Fantasia assenta-se sobre alicerces de sonhos esquecidos." A História Sem Fim(The whole kingdom of Fantasy sits upon foundations of forgotten dreams - Endless Story).
Michael Ende
Male aggressiveness consists in asking a woman to have intercourse and waiting for her to say yes, or a definite no. Skilful tacticians enhance their chances of making out by distributing their attentions among several women at a time (one version of 'playing the field') thus increasing their statistical chances for a favorable answer, depending on circumstances. This is the height of male aggressiveness that is tolerated. Genuine aggressiveness - rape - [men] have forbidden themselves by law.
Esther Vilar
As long as you're better at it than skating...," Anna said and stood up too. She wanted to say more, but that wasn't possible because he was kissing her. Reasonable Anna wanted to draw back the danger of touch. But unreasonable Anna welcomed the kiss like happiness. Maybe, she thought, it's better to take these moments when you get them - there might not be too many in life.
Antonia Michaelis
Kissing, said Lesley, ought really to be taught as a school subject, preferably instead of religious studies, which nobody needed.
Kerstin Gier
The reason for which Picasso was compelled to resort to signs and allegories should now be clear enough: his utter political helplessness in the face of a historical situation which he set out to record; his titanic effort to confront a particular historical event with an allegedly eternal truth; his desire to give hope and comfort and to provide a happy ending, to compensate for the terror, the destruction, and inhumanity of the event. Picasso did not see what Goya had already seen, namely, that the course of history can be changed only by historical means and only if men shape their own history instead of acting as the automaton of an earthly power or an allegedly eternal idea.
Max Raphael
Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers’ organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution.
Rudolf Rocker
Ever reviled, accursed, ne'er understood,Thou art the grisly terror of our age."Wreck of all order," cry the multitude,"Art thou, & war & murder's endless rage."0, let them cry. To them that ne'er have strivenThe 'truth that lies behind a word to find, To them the word's right meaning was not given.They shall continue blind among the blind.But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so true,Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.I give thee to the future! Thine secureWhen each at least unto himself shall waken.Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest's thrill?I cannot tell - but it the earth shall see!I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I willNot rule, & also ruled I will not be!
John Henry Mackay
First, with the establishment of a state and territorially defined state borders, “immigration” takes on an entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration). In contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by “foreigners” from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and their properties (macro-migration). If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government excludes this person from the state territory, it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also nonexistent in a natural order, where all movement is invited).
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Anarchists are mouthpieces of a declining stratum of society; when they work themselves into a state of righteous indignation demanding 'rights', 'justice', 'equal rights', they are just acting under the pressure of their own lack of culture, which has no way of grasping why they really suffer, or what they lack in life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foolishness? Were his father's religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.
Hermann Hesse
then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy.
Hermann Hesse
After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.
Hermann Hesse
If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.
Charles Bukowski
I think it's odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it.
Anne Frank
Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.
Ernst F. Schumacher
The perishableness of life...imparts value, dignity, interest to life.
Thomas Mann
Intelligent life on other planets? I'm not even sure there is on earth!
Albert Einstein
I curse when I get really upset. Letting off steam that way makes me feel a little bit better. I've been through a lot, but I have never had the urge to go postal. I thank fuck for that.
Oliver Markus Malloy
As long as a man has, he must give. And when he has nothing more, he is free. This freedom is far nobler than the former giving, for he no longer gives in accident but in essence, and he no longer gives one gift, but all gifts, and he no longer gives to just one man, but to all men.
John Tauler
Unlike them, however, her path was not through daring deeds or the study of magic or the use of miraculous powers. She had been gifted with something almost as rare: an open and eager mind. She had the gift of watching and listening, the gift of taking all the hurts and happenings of others' lives and understanding their purpose.
William Joyce
Remember, there are more people in the world than yourself. Be modest! You have not yet invented nor thought anything which others have not thought or invented before. And should you really have done so, consider it a gift of heaven which you are to share with others.
Robert Schumann
A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
Thomas à Kempis
This is how the zombie apocalypse starts," Cas said. "You don't screw with death, yo!
Jennifer Rush
There is, therefore, a temptation to return to an explanation which automatically discharges the victim of responsibility: it seems quite adequate to a reality in which nothing strikes us more forcefully than the utter innocence of the individual caught in the horror machine and his utter inability to change his fate. Terror, however, is only in the last instance of its development a mere form of government. In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology; and that ideology must have won the adherence of many, and even a majority, before terror can be stabilized. The point for the historian is that the Jews, before becoming the main victims of modern terror, were the center of Nazi ideology. And an ideology which has to persuade and mobilize people cannot choose its victim arbitrarily.
Hannah Arendt
Loneliness was the price of the quest. I don't belong to the people who cannot live alone
Mies Van Der Rohe
There’s no glory in this whole shit. No war is ever glorious. Heroes are usually dead. Besides, they rarely turn into heroes because they are super-humans, but because of circumstances.Heroes rarely think. Heroes just act. So, all this is, is a stage for glory, small, personal and up to each one of us.
Aleksandr Voinov
No war is ever glorious. Heroes are usually dead. Besides, they rarely turn into heroes because they are super-humans, but because of circumstances.
Aleksandr Voinov
What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.
Friedrich Nietzsche