Heinrich Heine > Quotes

“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged”
― Heinrich Heine

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.”
― Heinrich Heine

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”
― Heinrich Heine

“There are more fools in the world than there are people.”
― Heinrich Heine

“The more i get to know people, the more i like dogs.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Experience is a good school. But the fees are high”
― Heinrich Heine

“Lo, sleep is good, better is death--in sooth
The best of all were never to be born.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.”
― Heinrich Heine

“I wept in my dreams.
I dreamed you lay in the grave;
I awoke, and the tears
still poured down my cheeks.

I wept in my dreams,
I dreamed you had left me;
I awoke and I went on weeping
long and bitterly.

I wept in my dreams,
I dreamed you were still kind to me;
I awoke, and still
the flow of my tears streams on.
”
― Heinrich Heine

“Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

(Almansor)”
― Heinrich Heine, Gesammelte Werke

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”
― Heinrich Heine

“I live, which is the main point.”
― Heinrich Heine

“I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamed that I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom. ”
― Heinrich Heine

“Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people”
― Heinrich Heine

“The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“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

“All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it. ”
― Heinrich Heine

“Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. ... Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. (1834)”
― Heinrich Heine

“People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”
― Heinrich Heine, Über die französische Bühne

“God will forgive me. It's his job." Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it.”
― Heinrich Heine

“This was but a prelude;
where books are burnt
human-beings will be burnt
in the end”
― Heinrich Heine

“The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.”
― Heinrich Heine

“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.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.”
― Heinrich Heine

“The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.”
― Heinrich Heine