Heinrich Heine Quotes
Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.
At Dresden on the Elbe, that handsome city, Where straw hats, verses, and cigars are made, They've built (it well may make us feel afraid,) A music club and music warehouse pretty.
He that marries is like the dogs who was married to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries; mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him.
All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.
The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.
The lotus flower is troubled At the sun's resplendent light; With sunken head and sadly She dreamily waits for the night.
Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.
She resembles the Venus de Milo: she is very old, has no teeth, and has white spots on her yellow skin.
With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe.
Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.
High in the air rises the forest of oaks, high over the oaks soar the eagle, high over the eagle sweep the clouds, high over the clouds gleam the stars... high over the stars sweep the angels.
I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.
Oh, they loved dearly: their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss.
God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.
Twelve Dancings are dancing, and taking no rest, And closely their hands together are press'd; And soon as a dance has come to a close, Another begins, and each merrily goes.
Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.
There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.
I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.
Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.
It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.
Jews who long have drifted from the faith of their fathers... are stirred in their inmost parts when the old, familiar Passover sounds chance to fall upon their ears.
Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy--death.
Life is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity.
He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave.
I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.
You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.
At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it — but I did I bear it. The question remains: how?
The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on; The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun.
Laughter is wholesome. God is not so dull as some people make out. Did not He make the kitten to chase its tail.
Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.