Quotes by German Authors - Page 52

You can't change things. That's life. Poor stays poor, rich says rich, and those two, they will never meet.
Antonia Michaelis
World, they have taken the small children like butterflies and thrown them, beating their wings, into the fire--
Nelly Sachs
The important question of how poverty can be remedied is one which agitates and torments modern societies especially
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
people who eat 3 meals a day throughout lifehave never reallytastedFood...
Charles Bukowski
It is quite wrong to assume that poor people are generally unwilling to change; but the proposed change must stand in some organic relationship to what they are doing already, and they are rightly suspicious of, and resistant to, radical changes proposed by town-based and office-bound innovators who approach them in the spirit of: "You just get out of my way and I shall show you how useless you are and how splendidly the job can be done with a lot of foreign money and outlandish equipment.
Ernst F. Schumacher
You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy, but till you feed us right and wrong can wait. Or is it only those who have the money who can enter the land of milk and honey?
Bertolt Brecht
As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
Walter Benjamin
When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row.""There are some real weirdos down there.""They're everywhere.
Charles Bukowski
What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
Charles Bukowski
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
Charles Bukowski
Why do we fear the dark as unavoidable defeat when it alone is constant, and we'd starve if it stopped watering the lawn of dreams.
Rosmarie Waldrop
It's just that when you're standing beside an open window at twilight, you can say more toeach other than in bright sunshine. It's also easier to whisper your feelings than toshout them from the rooftops.
Anne Frank
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.
Anne Frank
Weird is just a side-effect of being awesome!
Jean Gilbert
If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[representative government is] deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament,
Karl Marx
No one could honestly say that a musical makes sense.
Siegfried Kracauer
Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored.
Oliver Markus
Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. People used to say they like to read books about romance, true crime, comedy, horror or science fiction. But these days people simply say they like to read "Young Adult" books. As if that were a topic. But that's the thing: Young Adult is not a topic, it's a level of censorship. Saying "I like Young Adult books" is just another way of saying "I like books that have been dumbed down for children. I like books with no big words and no difficult abstract concepts. Nothing that will strain my brain." People like to brag that they used to start reading at an early age, as if that were a badge of honor, a sign of intelligence. Nobody brags about when they started to watch TV. But books are being dumbed down so much these days, it's really not a sign of great intelligence when you're a grown up and you struggle your way through Green Eggs and Ham.
Oliver Markus
He understood it then. The potential, the utter, unbelievable freedom to be whoever existed underneath his skin.
Aleksandr Voinov
She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.
Jan-Philipp Sendker
You were too lazy to learn to dance until it was almost too late, and in the same way you were too lazy to learn to love. As for ideal and tragic love, that I don't doubt you can do marvellously- and all honour to you. Now you will learn to love a little in an ordinary human way.
Hermann Hesse
Cancer - a more or less permanent traffic jam in the body.
Andreas Moritz
Religion is also a process of healing, I discovered – a healing of the soul. Even our language points to this relation. The words ‘holy’, ‘wholesome’ and ‘healing’ all have the same root. (In German, this is even more striking: heilig, heil and heilen.) Muslims believe that all humans are born in a state of purity, our fitra, and it is only in the course of our lives that we tarnish our soul through bad habits and wrong behaviour. Through spiritual practices such as prayer, recitation of Quran and dhikr we can cleanse these acquired ‘black spots’ in our soul and return towards our original primordial nature. More so, dhikr is said to enliven the heart.
Kristiane Backer
Gerbert, by the window, shuddered; his mouth contorted. The witch began to twist faster and faster while her twin was talking to Gisela, mumbling to her, marching old holy words straight through the child’s ear into her skull, where they entered the bloodstream and looked for the enemy. The monk’s fingers twitched in the same rhythm and he found himself falling into a trance. He knew it would be dangerous to witness the witches brewing and dancing but there was an energy in it that he’d missed badly since he’d been asked to educate the young princess. Gerbert didn’t even notice when the hags stopped, tucked the girl in, rubbed the concoction on her lips and left for the unseen place from which they had come. Gisela healed quickly thereafter: The fever fell that same night and she asked for solid food the next morning. She had no memory of what had happened, but when she bounced on one leg across the meadow in the castle yard, she chanted a little melody that had not been heard in church, an odd melody that made Gerbert’s ears prick up because he sensed the uncanny in it.
Marcus Speh
The doctor of the future will be oneself.
Albert Schweitzer
To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
Eckhart Tolle
don’t be like so many writers,don’t be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don’t be dull and boring andpretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don’t add to that.don’t do it.
Charles Bukowski
Faith in Providence is faith in one's own worth, … [H]ence also false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself to the blessed God. God … wills that I shall be blest; but that is my will also: … God's love for me [is] nothing else than my own self-love deified.
Ludwig Feuerbach
If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.
Charles Bukowski
At last the gardener arrived, mumbling something about rascals and country bumpkins, and took me out into the park, giving me a lengthy lecture as he did so. I was instructed to be sober and industrious, and not to wander about aimlessly or waste my time in unproductive activities: if I heeded this counsel, he said, I might in time achieve something. He gave me much other useful and well-phrased advice too, but I have since forgotten almost all of it.
Joseph von Eichendorff
Talent is only cream in your coffee. There is no reason to rest on your talent. If you don't present it, then it gets nowhere.
Mies Van Der Rohe
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility.
Susan Neiman
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.
Max Planck
Do you think the Goblin King really did it?" asked Cordelia hesitantly. All the sheep knew she was talking about George's death. Mopple quickly pulled up a tuft of grass."Or Satan?" added Lane."Nonsense," Rameses snorted nervously. "Satan would never do a thing like that."several of the sheep bleated in agreement. None of them thought Satan capable of such an act. Satan was an elderly donkey who sometimes grazed in the meadow next to theirs, and uttered blood-curdling cries. his voice was truly dreadful, but otherwise he'd always struck them as harmless.
Leonie Swann
One thing, however, did become clear to him—why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing—mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery.
Hermann Hesse
How love works: Proximity leads to intimacy, and intimacy leads to a relationship. In other words, people who are around each other a lot, get close, and end up hooking up. So it's no great mystery why bosses and secretaries or co-workers or classmates end up dating each other.
Oliver Gaspirtz
The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.
Pope Benedict XVI
The less theorizing you do about God, the more receptive you are to His inpouring.
Meister Eckhart
No sheep may leave the flock," he said to anyone who would listen, "unless he comes back again.
Leonie Swann
Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Let temporal things be in the use, eternal things in the desire.
Thomas à Kempis
When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.
Cornelia Funke
When a man desires a thing too much, he at once becomes ill at ease. A proud and avaricious man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of heart lives in a world of peace. An unmortified man is quickly tempted and overcome in small, trifling evils; his spirit is weak, in a measure carnal and inclined to sensual things; he can hardly abstain from earthly desires. Hence it makes him sad to forego them; he is quick to anger if reproved. Yet if he satisfies his desires, remorse of conscience overwhelms him because he followed his passions and they did not lead to the peace he sought.
Thomas à Kempis
A possession considered of little value up to now suddenly becomes precious to a person if another person desires it, don't you think?
Christa Wolf
My God, Sweetness beyond words, make bitter all the carnal comfort that draws me from love of the eternal and lures me to its evil self by the sight of some delightful good in the present. Let it not overcome me, my God. Let not flesh and blood conquer me. Let not the world and its brief glory deceive me, nor the devil trip me by his craftiness. Give me courage to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to persevere. Give me the soothing unction of Your spirit rather than all the consolations of the world, and in place of carnal love, infuse into me the love of Your name.
Thomas à Kempis
Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
Richard Courant
In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired.
Friedrich Nietzsche
desires are not killed by fulfilling them
Hermann Hesse
Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- then why not the satisfaction and the act itself? As the days went on, I discovered that I couldn't stop thinking sinful thoughts. In which case I also wanted the sin itself.
Bernhard Schlink
Peter Wessel and Peter Van Daan have grown into one Peter, who is beloved and good, and for whom I long desperately.
Anne Frank
No permanence is ours; we are a waveThat flows to fit whatever form it finds:Through night or day, cathedral or the caveWe pass forever, craving form that binds.
Hermann Hesse
I'm sentimental--I know. I'm desperate and silly--I know that too. Oh, help me!
Anne Frank
She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.
Charles Bukowski
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail.
Charles Bukowski
I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges.
Charles Bukowski