Quotes by German Authors - Page 45

All growth toward perfection is but a returning to original existence.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars.
Hermann Hesse
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
Charles Bukowski
Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.
Otto von Bismarck
The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.
Rudolf Rocker
[Paul] has no intention to instruct the Christian community about the task and responsibility of government. His entire concern is with the responsibility of the Christian community towards the State.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Are there good governments and bad governments? No, there are only bad governments and worse governments.
Charles Bukowski
The state was made for man, not man for state.
Albert Einstein
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced
Albert Einstein
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
God does not expect of us what we cannot do, but He does expect what we can do.
Kristiane Backer
You only really get to know a person after a fight. Only then can you judge their true character
Anne Frank
Character is a question of time. It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time. But they don't last forever.
Bertolt Brecht
What many people do not understand is: It's not about who you think you know, but about who actually knows you. So better start giving today, be it giving everything at your job, or giving out lunch to that man. Start giving, and the world will know your true character!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
When it came to hiding, even Gwin had nothing to teach Dustfinger. A strange sense of curiosity had always driven him to explore the hidden, forgotten corners of this and any other place, and all that knowledge had now come in useful.
Cornelia Funke
Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.
Arthur Schopenhauer
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
Hermann Hesse
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have been heartbroken once and it has affected all of my relationships from there on. But now I look at it as an occupational hazard. If you are in the meat market at some point you are gonna get mad cow disease.
Dominic Monaghan
Everything has an ending" that’s what he said. But "True love has no ending", that’s what I say.
Lily Amis
but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!
Anne Frank
The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.
Charles Bukowski
What you create doesn't have to be perfect....Don't let fear of failure discourage you. Don't let the voice of critics paralyze you—whether that voice comes from the outside or inside
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Under peaceful conditions, the warlike man attacks himself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Only he who can view his past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn.
Walter Benajmin
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad (jihad alakbar).”His followers asked him what that greater jihad was. “The struggle against your passionate soul,” he replied.‘So what does this greater jihad entail?’ I asked him.‘It is the effort to practise our faith,’ Gai replied. ‘To pray five times every day is an effort, to veil one’s selfish desires and conduct life in accordance with Islamic ethics and laws. The greatest “spiritual warriors” are the saints armed not with weapons but with prayer and prayer beads.’ While it all made sense I wanted to know more about the idea that we needed to go out and fight jihad.
Kristiane Backer
So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
Eckhart Tolle
A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.
Albert Schweitzer
I know a womanwho keeps buying puzzleschinesepuzzlesblockswirespieces that finally fitinto some order.she works it outmathmaticallyshe solves all herpuzzleslives down by the seaputs sugar out for the antsand believesultimatelyin a better world.her hair is whiteshe seldom combs ither teeth are snaggledand she wears loose shapelesscoveralls over a body mostwomen would wish they had.for many years she irritated mewith what I considered hereccentricities-like soaking eggshells in water(to feed the plants so thatthey'd get calcium).but finally when I think of herlifeand compare it to other livesmore dazzling, originaland beautifulI realize that she has hurt fewerpeople than anybody I know(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).she has had some terrible times,times when maybe I should havehelped her morefor she is the mother of my onlychildand we were once great lovers,but she has come throughlike I saidshe has hurt fewer people thananybody I know,and if you look at it like that,well,she has created a better world.she has won.Frances, this poem is foryou.
Charles Bukowski
Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I let you discover my skin but you found a way under.
Katja Michael
To stop the bleeding i pushed back the blood that was bleeding out of the hole in my heart. It kept overflowing when i missed you and im dying, not literally, but my heart is.
Nicole
They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last hours.
Hermann Hesse
my 6 foot goddessmakes me laughthe laughter of the mutilatedwho still needlove...she has saved mefrom everything that isnot here
Charles Bukowski
O bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of leisure! Of no one has less been expected and no one has had a greater sense of well-being than... a collector. Ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have to objects. No t that they come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them.
Walter Benjamin
The more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.
Eckhart Tolle
In many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.
Eckhart Tolle
Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model.
Friedrich Nietzsche
But since Kurdistan did not, as such, exist; since it was an imaginary land, stretching over scraggy mountains and deep valleys in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria; since they were as landless as the Palestinians and as nameless as the Liberians, the Kurds didn't really exist either, and so, officially, they were Turks.
Sophie Hardach
He said you have to be on the side of the losers, the people with bad lungs. You have to be with those who are homesick and can't breathe very well in Ireland. He said it makes no sense to hold a stone in your hand. A lot more people would be homeless if you speak the killer language. He said Ireland has more than one story. We are the German-Irish story. We are the English-Irish story, too. My father has one soft foot and one hard foot, one good ear and one bad ear, and we have one Irish foot and one German foot and a right arm in English. We are the brack children. Brack, homemade Irish bread with German raisins. We are the brack people and we don't have just one language and one history. We sleep in German and we dream in Irish. We laugh in Irish and we cry in German. We are silent in German and we speak in English. We are the speckled people.
Hugo Hamilton
When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
Eckhart Tolle
I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
Eckhart Tolle
As we know life in ourselves we want to understand life in the universe in order to enter into harmony with it.
Albert Schweitzer
That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
Hermann Hesse
...our brains are minuscule fragments of the universe, much too small to hold all the facts of the world but not too idle to speculate about them.
Valentino Braitenberg
This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?
Max Planck
The fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat.1. The energy of the universe is constant.2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
Rudolf Clausius
One day, my father said there was nothing outside infinity. He said the universe was like a cardboard box with God sitting outside surrounded by light, but I wanted to know if maybe God was sitting inside another cardboard box with the light on, and how could anyone be sure how many cardboard boxes there are.
Hugo Hamilton
Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move.
Albert Einstein
The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe the universe is friendly.
Albert Einstein
But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgments! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress...
Friedrich Nietzsche
How alone everyone is in the vast tomb of the universe!
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
Nothing happens until something moves.
Albert Einstein
It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to inquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer