Quotes by German Authors - Page 93

We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
Martin Luther
All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.
Martin Luther
Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.
Paul Tillich
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
Erich Fromm
You have as much laughter as you have faith.
Martin Luther
I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.
Martin Luther
I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.
Albert Einstein
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche
EpitaphDen Tigern ertrann ichDie Wanzen nährte ichAufgefressen wurde ichVon den Mittelmäßigkeiten.
Bertolt Brecht
When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me.
Hermann Hesse
crawled like a blind slug into the web
Charles Bukowski
in der Fußgängerzone kam Wind auf wie immer Wind aufkommt bei der Suche nach jenem richtigen Ort der sich stets weit entfernt zeigt, die Abfallpapiere am Boden verrutschten, mein Mantel flatterte, und, als wäre dies schon ein Grund mich selbst zu den Dingen zu zählen als wäre dies schon ein Grund blieb ich ungefragt stehen
Marion Poschmann
A poem is a frozen momentmelted by each reader for themselvesto flow into the here and now.
Hilde Domin
Jag föddes för att kränga rosor på de dödas avenyer
Charles Bukowski
Please lift your snowy skies off my soul -Your diamond dreams slice through my veins
Else Lasker-Schüler
It got so bad that Al thoughtmaybe it washimso he went to a shrinkand askedand the shrink said,"you're one of the sanest menI've ever met."poor Al.that made him feelworse than ever.
Charles Bukowski
I remember yoursaying: "make itor break it."neither happened anditwon't.
Charles Bukowski
I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie.
Charles Bukowski
Wer ein Theater füllen will, bedient sich der Dramaturgie. Um es zu leeren genügt Ideologie.
Oliver Hassencamp
Voll Blüten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wächst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Blüten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' blühen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blütenüberfluss sonst wär' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss.
Hermann Hesse
Când ne deschidemtu mie şi eu ţie,când ne scufundămtu în mine şi eu în tine,când ne pierdemtu în mine şi eu în tine,Abia atuncieu sunt euşi tu eşti tu.
Bernhard Schlink
The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean.
Charles Bukowski
we must bringour own lightto thedarkness.
Charles Bukowski
I care for you, darling, I love you,the only reason I fucked L. is because you fuckedZ. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N.and because you fucked N. I had to fuckY. But I think of you constantly, I feel youhere in my belly like a baby, love I'd call it,no matter what happens I'd call it love, and soyou fucked C. and then before I could moveyou fucked W., so I had to fuck D. ButI want you to know that I love you, I think of youconstantly, I don't think I've ever loved anybodylike I love you.
Charles Bukowski
Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Born into thisInto hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to dieInto lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guiltyInto a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closedInto a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes...
Charles Bukowski
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
Charles Bukowski
. . .because we had survivedsisters and brothers, daughters and sons,we discovered bones that rosefrom the dark earth and sangas white birds in the treesBecause the story of our lifebecomes our lifeBecause each of us tells the same storybut tells it differentlyand none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories)
Lisel Mueller
Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.
Charles Bukowski
where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die,
Charles Bukowski
If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.
Charles Bukowski
during my worst timeson the park benchesin the jailsor living withwhoresI always had this certaincontentment-I wouldn't call ithappiness-it was more of an innerbalancethat settled forwhatever was occuringand it helped in thefactoriesand when relationshipswent wrongwith thegirls.it helpedthrough thewars and thehangoversthe backalley fightsthehospitals.to awaken in a cheap roomin a strange city andpull up the shade-this was the craziest kind ofcontentmentand to walk across the floorto an old dresser with acracked mirror-see myself, ugly,grinning at it all.what matters most ishow well youwalk through thefire.
Charles Bukowski
And then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw.
Charles Bukowski
it's so easy to be a poetand so hard to be a man.
Charles Bukowski
In scientific thinking are always present elements of poetry. Science and music requires a thought homogeneous.
Albert Einstein
For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine.
Friedrich Hölderlin
I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.
Charles Bukowski
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A pine tree standeth lonelyIn the North on an upland bare;It standeth whitely shroudedWith snow, and sleepeth there.It dreameth of a Palm treeWhich far in the East alone,In the mournful silence standethOn its ridge of burning stone.
Heinrich Heine
Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests
Karl Lagerfeld
First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how.
Heinrich Heine
sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice to beBukowski.
Charles Bukowski
Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.
Rosa Luxemburg
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
Heinrich Heine
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
Friedrich Nietzsche
when I am feelinglowall i have to do iswatch my catsand mycouragereturns
Charles Bukowski
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
Novalis
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
Charles Bukowski
He hablado ex profeso con el viento -anunció-, pues hay una cosa que debes saber: cuando el viento se obstina en jugar con el fuego, ni yo mismo puedo domeñarlo. Pero me ha dado su palabra de honor de que esta noche se mantendrá en calma y no nos estropeará la diversión.
Cornelia Funke
Sleep is death enjoyed.
Friedrich Hebbel
I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.
Karl Lagerfeld
Forgiveness isn’t something I’m preoccupied with — turning the other cheek isn’t my trip.
Karl Lagerfeld
....but talking to a ghost about a demon when you’re in a room full of people who can’t see either of them is not to be recommended.
Kerstin Gier
The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman.
Karl Lagerfeld