Quotes by German Authors - Page 94

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that's all there is to it.
Charles Bukowski
I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?
Karl Lagerfeld
Fashion is about going ahead, not about memory.
Karl Lagerfeld
I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble.
Karl Lagerfeld
Fashion is about two things: the evolution and the opposite.
Karl Lagerfeld
The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.
Karl Lagerfeld
I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.
Karl Lagerfeld
Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.
Karl Lagerfeld
the best part waspulling down theshadesstuffing the doorbellwith ragsputting the phonein therefrigeratorand going to bedfor 3 or 4days. and the next bestpartwasnobody evermissedme.
Charles Bukowski
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
Marlene Dietrich
People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.
Karl Lagerfeld
Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
Karl Lagerfeld
The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.
Karl Lagerfeld
I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern.
Karl Lagerfeld
Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.
Karl Lagerfeld
The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality.
Thomas Mann
Wenn ich es mir aussuchen könnte, würde ich am liebsten bei einem Flugzeugabsturz sterben. Aber auf gar keinen Fall im Bett. Vielleicht mit Ines, oder mit Frau Sprengel, auf dem Linienflug nach Südamerika. Das rechte Triebwerk ist mit einem kaum hörbaren Knall explodiert und zieht eine endlose Feuerschleppe hinter sich her, als wir gerade über dem offenen Meer sind. Die Passagiere kreischen, einige ganz Doofe betteln die Stewardess um Fallschirme an. Ich lege meine Lektüre aus der Hand, beuge mich zu Ines, und sage, ich hatte noch gar nicht zu Ende gelesen. Und Ines sagt, gut, dass wir nicht das teure Hotel gebucht haben. Und wir schauen uns an und wissen, dass wir uns verstanden haben in diesem Leben. Durch das kleine runde Fenster rast die Wasseroberfläche auf uns zu, die bei dieser Geschwindigkeit härter ist als Beton, und ich halte Ines fest und flüstere ihr etwas in Ohr, solange ich noch flüstern kann und solange sie noch ein Ohr hat.
Wolfgang Herrndorf
Die before you die and find that there is no death.
Eckhart Tolle
We must learn to accept ourselves in the painful experiment of living. We must embrace the spiritual adventure of becoming human, moving through the many stages that lie between birth and death.
Johann Baptist Metz
And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over.
Hermann Hesse
Everyone facing death, especially premature death, like us, will be kicking themselves about each wasted hour.
Hans Fallada
I paid, got up, walkedto the door, openedit.I heard the mansay, "that guy'snuts."out on the street Iwalked northfeelingcuriouslyhonored.
Charles Bukowski
waitingin a life full of little storiesfor a death to come
Charles Bukowski
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Может быть, у смерти совсем другое имя. Мы ведь видим ее всегда только с одной стороны. Может быть, смерть - это совершенная любовь между нами и Богом.
Erich Maria Remarque
As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly.
Guy Sajer
The Thought of Death. It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life- loving people! How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling companion stands behind him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an emigrant- ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the noise-so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do something to make the idea of life to us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. And so we will believe in our even a hundred times more worthy of their attention.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I'm one of those who doesn't think there is much differencebetween an atomic scientist and a man who cleans the crappersexcept for the luck of the draw - parents with enough money to point you toward a moregenerous death.of course, some come through brilliantly, butthere are thousands, millions of others, bottled up, keptfrom even the most minute chance to realize their potential.
Charles Bukowski
I believe that to be the world's greatest livingwriterthere must be somethingterribly wrong with you.I don't even want to be the world's greatestdead writer.just being dead would be fairenough.
Charles Bukowski
Corpses sour you. They are bad for objectivity.
Bertolt Brecht
This showed once again that everyone had something different to lose in this battle. Some were concerned for their lives, and some for those they cared most about: rays, sea horses, even the chickens that ran free in the streets of the city because they couldn't all be caught in time.
Kai Meyer
Lieb Liebchen, leg ‘s Händchen aufs Herze mein; -Ach, hörst du, wie’s pochet im Kämmerlein,Da hauset ein Zimmermann schlimm und arg,Der zimmert mir einen Totensarg.Es hämmert und klopfet bei Tag und bei Nacht;Es hat mich schon längst um den Schlaf gebracht.Ach! sputet Euch, Meister Zimmermann,Damit ich balde schlafen kann.
Heinrich Heine
…the longer I think about it the more it seems to me that we who are still alive are unreal in the eyes of the dead, that only occasionally, in certain lights and atmospheric conditions, do we appear in their field of vision.
W.G. Sebald
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin
For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.
Hermann Hesse
Heaven is a place where all the dogs you've ever loved come to greet you.
Oliver Gaspirtz
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people
Heinrich Heine
La mayoría de la muerte de la gente es una farsa, no queda en ellos nada que pueda morir
Charles Bukowski
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
Erik H. Erikson
Everything science has taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.
Werner Von Braun
Ich werde stehen und warten.Ich werde müde werden.Ich werde nicht einschlafen.Ich werde sterben.
Hermann Hesse
Take me as godfather." The man asked, "Who art thou?" "I am Death, and I make all equal." Then said the man, "Thou art the right one, thou takest the rich as well as the poor, without distinction; thou shalt be godfather." Death answered, "I will make thy child rich and famous, for he who has me for a friend can lack nothing.
Jacob Grimm
shot in the eyeshot in the brainshot in the assshot like a flower in the danceamazing how death wins hands downamazing how much credence is given to idiot forms oflifeamazing how laughter has been drowned outamazing how viciousness is such a constantI must soon declare my own war on their warI must hold to my last piece of groundI must protect the small space I have made that hasallowed me lifemy life not their deathmy death not their deaththis place, this time, nowI vow to the sunthat I will laugh the good laugh once againin the perfect place of meforever.their death not my life.
Charles Bukowski
...there's not enough of anything to go around except people and death.
Saša Stanišić
I see a brightportionunder the overhead lightthat shades intodarknessand then into darkerdarknessand I can't see beyond that.
Charles Bukowski
I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, insect, fish didn't have a chance. The fix was in. I didn't know what to do about it. I got depressed. You know, I see a boy at the supermarket, he's packing my groceries, then I see him sticking himself into his own grave along with the toilet paper, the beer and the chicken breasts.
Charles Bukowski
Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder...
Cornelia Funke
Decline is also a form of voluptuousness, just like growth. Autumn is just as sensual as springtime. There is as much greatness in dying as in procreation.
Iwan Goll
Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly—he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed—he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around.
Hermann Hesse
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.
Arthur Schopenhauer
as long as there arehuman beings aboutthere is never going to beany peacefor any individualupon this earth (oranywhere elsethey mightescape to).all you can dois maybe grabten lucky minuteshereor maybe an hourthere.somethingis working toward youright now, andI mean youand nobody butyou.
Charles Bukowski
Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!
Thomas Mann
Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The final reward of the dead - to die no more
Friedrich Nietzsche
the worst thing," he told me,"is bitterness, people end up sobitter.
Charles Bukowski
Our knowledge of life is limited to death
Erich Maria Remarque
Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.
Guy Sajer
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.
Friedrich Nietzsche
well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you
Charles Bukowski
The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.
Erich Fromm