Quotes by German Authors - Page 40

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence.
Rudolf Karl Bultmann
Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.
Paul Tillich
The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason
Friedrich Nietzsche
... it would be better for our country and the world in general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood for reason and the love of peace instead of heading wildly with blind obsession for new war.
Hermann Hesse
The only Thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Nihil est sine ratione.[There is nothing without a reason.]
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
But dogmatism--or the inclination 'to identify the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have become tired of thinking'--is so natural to man that it is not likely to be a preserve of the past. [Citing "Ame," Dictionnaire philosophique, ed. J. Benda, I, 19]
Leo Strauss
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
It is necessary, first of all, to find a correct logical starting point, one which can lead us to a natural and sound interpretation of the empirical facts.
Ernst Cassirer
In his opinion, all the world’s misfortunes stemmed from the countless untruths, both deliberate and unintentional, which people told because of haste or carelessness.
Michael Ende
But dogmatism—or the inclination "to identify the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have become tired of thinking"—is so natural to man that it is not likely to be a preserve of the past. [Citing Lessing's January 9, 1771 letter to Mendelssohn.]
Leo Strauss
He always maintained that we fear something because we recognize it as fearsome through rational inferences, and that only the reason had any power; the heart had none. While I ate well and drank well, he kept demonstrating to me the advantages of reason... In striving after the positive, the poor man had argued away all life's splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave.
Heinrich Heine
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Albert Einstein
Grant me one hour on love’s most sacred shoresTo clasp the bosom that my soul adores,Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him.
Bernhard Schlink
Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One must undertake everything with utter, fanatical determination. Or one will get nowhere.
Timur Vermes
Dogs will give you unconditional love until the day they die. Cats will make you pay for every mistake you've ever made since the day you were born.
Oliver Gaspirtz
Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I will try to write books until I drop dead.
Cornelia Funke
Being on Facebook as an Author and listing your books is like being a tiny single word in a giant dictionary! If people don’t search for you they don’t find you. They don’t take notice of you. They don’t even know you exist! Thats the hard reality of Socialmedia!
Lily Amis
The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,’ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. ‘I identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,’ he said. ‘His brothers sold him like goods in the market place.’ Yusuf felt the music business had treated him not like an artist but as a commodity.
Kristiane Backer
According to Islam, whenever we are struck by illness or misfortune or someone hurts us, there is a higher purpose behind it, which we may not understand at the time,’ one of them said to me. ‘That’s where trust comes in. Through suffering, God helps us to better ourselves and make good our mistakes. It is a form of purification and also God’s way of testing the strength of our faith and the goodness of our character.’ Another lady suggested I look on the bright side.‘Suffering draws us closer to God and that is our aim in life,’ she said. Then she quoted Rumi who had said, ‘It is pain that draws man to his Lord, because when he is well, he doesn’t remember the Lord.’ I tried to look at the positive and believe that there was a higher, spiritual perspective on what I had just been through, and all the advice I was given helped me a lot. But it took quite a while for my heart to catch up with my mind.
Kristiane Backer
It was clear to me by now that studying Islam was one thing – and absolutely worthwhile, because it helped me grasp the meaning of the religion and how it all fitted together. However, I felt as though I was standing in front of a shop window full of lovely things, and all I could do was admire them from afar. I was still separated from them by the window, or, as Muslims might say, a veil. In order to lift this veil, there was only one way forward: to get down onto the prayer mat and start living according to Islamic principles.
Kristiane Backer
Sometimes I was too tired, other times just lazy. Now and then, I was frustrated because nothing seemed to be happening – no signs from God, no enlightenment, nothing. But that wasn’t the point, the Shaykh explained. What mattered was the inner connection with God, which builds slowly and only transforms us gradually.Another obstacle, however, was that I often found it hard to concentrate during the dhikr.
Kristiane Backer
Of course I’d like to marry a practising Muslim, someone I can share my life and also my religion with, but I just haven’t met the right man yet,’ I told her. Fadwa was sympathetic and understood my dilemma. ‘Concentrate on your relationship with God; purify yourself, your life and your intentions. Better your religion!’ she recommended. ‘If you are patient and steadfast, then you will be rewarded, insha’ Allah.
Kristiane Backer
During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God’s voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith.We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves.
Kristiane Backer
When you accept Islam, you don’t cease to be the person you were before in your identity and culture,’ he told me. ‘The only thing that Islam does is make you stronger in your identity in terms of actualising your personality, and in understanding who you are, what you’re supposed to do and what the purpose and meaning of your life is.
Kristiane Backer
Among the lessons I learned on Hajj was that I needed to be mindful and keep the inner connection with God at all times and that self-improvement is definitely a never-ending struggle.
Kristiane Backer
The way we experience the pilgrimage is a reflection of our inner state,’ the imam said. ‘To some of us it will be a strenuous trial, whereas to others every step of the way is a joy, despite the privations and discomfort.
Kristiane Backer
You may have lost someone, but you’ve found something immeasurably more valuable: God,’ she told me. ‘And God’s love lasts forever.
Kristiane Backer
As pilgrims we effectively slip into the role of our spiritual ancestress and run back and forth between the hills seven times. This symbolises our own quest in this world for whatever we are seeking and God’s Mercy which fulfils our quest even beyond our expectations.
Kristiane Backer
The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points.If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.
Frithjof Schuon
God was inviting me to go on Hajj, but before that I needed to settle my debts. Muslims may only embark on their pilgrimage if they are debt-free or at least have made an arrangement for repayment.
Kristiane Backer
the essence of the Hajj is Arafat. On the ninth day of the Hajj month all pilgrims gather on the great Plain of Arafat to offer their deepest heartfelt prayers. It’s a reminder of Resurrection, when everyone will stand “naked” before God on Judgement Day and nothing counts but our actions and their effects upon our soul’.
Kristiane Backer
Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. ‘Die before you die’ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me.
Kristiane Backer
You think it's impossible to be a passive fighter? Well, sometimes fighting just means existing. Existing, not going away, and quietly biding your time.
Sophie Hardach
This division is not one by religious affiliation, rather it separates the extremists and the peace-loving people.Therefor I'm optimistic: now a humanistic Islam is getting shaken awake. Moderate Islam needs now to finally break cover and explain how to deal with the violence-glorifying parts of the Quran. The (psychological) repression that this has nothing to do with our belief doesn't work anymore. We have to face this challenge.
Mouhanad Khorchide
Everywhere where detestable Islam has not yet driven out the ancient, profound religions of humanity with fire and sword, my ascetic results would have to fear the reproach of being trivial
Arthur Schopenhauer
Christians today who view the Bible as God's unadulterated and inerrant word are rightly labeled fundamentalists, while Muslims who think the same of the Qur'an are simply considered Muslims.
Hamed Abdel-Samad
...differences between the world's Muslim communities are less important than what they share-namely, Islamism, sharia, and the dream of caliphate.
Hamed Abdel-Samad
From Aus B. Shurahbil" He heard Allah Messenger say: "One who strives to strengthen an oppressor and knows he is an oppressor has already left Islam. Baihaqi
Ahmad Von Denffer
And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done.
Eugen Herrigel
Entrepreneurship: you put one dumb foot in front of the other while the world throws bricks at your head.
Peter Thiel
Yohannes D. Asega > My Quotes(showing 1-1 of 1)sort by ↑ topup up positiondown down↓ bottomRemove this quote from your collectionArthur Schopenhauer“We, the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world may invade and agitate our personal environment.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The manager swiftly overtook him, sliding effortlessly past the skinny Englishman, with the practiced ease of someone used to slinking around ailing, despotic monarchs.
Tom Vater
Cases of typhoid take the following course:When the fever is at its height, life calls out to the patient: calls out to him as he wanders in his distant dream, and summons him in no uncertain voice. The harsh, imperious call reaches the spirit on that remote path that leads into the shadows, the coolness and peace. He hears the call of life, the clear, fresh, mocking summons to return to that distant scene which he had already left so far behind him, and already forgotten. And there may well up in him something like a feeling of same for a neglected duty; a sense of renewed energy, courage, and hope; he may recognize a bond existing still between him and that stirring, colourful, callous existence which he thought he had left so far behind him. Then, how far he may have wandered on his distant path, he will turn back--and live. But if he shudders when he hears life's voice, if the memory of that vanished scene and the sound of that lusty summons make him shake his head, make him put out his hand to ward off as he flies forward in the way of escape that has opened to him--then it is clear that the patient will die." Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann
The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.
Marcus Speh
There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking.
Charles Bukowski
Nothing happens without God’s will, and life doesn’t always go according to plan. Man proposes, God disposes. And it is God’s will that we need to surrender to. In retrospect it usually all makes sense.
Kristiane Backer
Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability!...Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed—thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A cast which ye made had failed...The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all—been failures?Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh!What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not—man's future strive and struggle in you?Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel?What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, Oh, how much is still possible!
Friedrich Nietzsche
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender
Eckhart Tolle
He is not truly patient who will only suffer as far as seems right to him and from whom he pleases. The truly patient man considers not by whom he is tried, one above him, or by an equal, or by an inferior, whether by a good and holy man or by a perverse and unworthy, but from every creature. He gratefully accepts all from the hand of God and counts it gain.
Thomas à Kempis
Sometimes, you have to love beyond yourself! And that's how you learn to love! That's why you had to drink the bitter glass of your love.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.
Thomas à Kempis
The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side.
Edith Hamilton
...my pride in Joachim Mahlke was as sweet as chocolate creams.
Günter Grass
Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that viciousness!
Friedrich Nietzsche