Friedrich Hölderlin > Quotes

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.”
― Holderlin

“But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“You have a head and a heart? Reveal only one of them, I say; If you reveal both at once, doubly they'll damn you, for both.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen ist alles. (We are nothing; what we search for is everything.)”
― Holderlin F

“when i was a boy
a god often rescued me
from the shouts and the rods of men
and i played among trees and flowers
secure in their kindness
and the breezes of heaven
were playing there too.

and as you delight
the hearts of plants
when they stretch towards you
with little strength

so you delighted the heart in me
father Helios, and like Endymion
i was your favourite,
Moon. o all

you friendly
and faithful gods
i wish you could know
how my soul has loved you.

even though when i called to you then
it was not yet with names, and you
never named me as people do
as though they knew one another

i knew you better
than i have ever known them.
i understood the stillness above the sky
but never the words of men.

trees were my teachers
melodious trees
and i learned to love
among flowers.

i grew up in the arms of the gods.”
― Friedrich Holderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“You have lost faith in anything great; you are doomed, then, doomed to perish unless that faith returns, like a comet from unknown skies.”
― Holderlin

“Isn’t everything alive already in your blood?”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Why do you like me more when I was prouder and wilder, more full of words, yet emptier?”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine.”
― Friedrich Holderlin

“Near and hard
to grasp
Is the God.
But where danger is
Deliverance also grows”
― Friedrich Holderlin, Friedrich Holderlin Eduard Morike - Selected Poems

“I am mortal, born to love and to suffer.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“in the union of nature, loyalty is no dream! We part only to be more intimately at one, more divinely at peace with all, with each other. We die so as to live.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion

“Then and Now In younger days each morning I rose with joy, To weep at nightfall; now, in my later years, Though doubting I begin my day, yet Always its end is serene and holy.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“I can think of no people more fragmented... Craftsmen you see, but no humans, thinkers, but no humans, priests, but no humans, lords and servants, boys and established peoples but no humans--is this not like a battlefield, where hands and arms and all limbs lie chaotically in pieces, while the spilled blood of life runs into the sand?”
― Friedrich Holderlin

“Sometimes his genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart. But mostly his apocalyptic star glitters wondrously”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“I grew up in the arms of the gods.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“It was not delight, not wonder that arose among us, it was the peace of heaven. A thousand times have I said it to her and to myself: the most beautiful is also the most sacred. And such was everything in her. Like her singing, even so was her life.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“To the Parcae"

A single summer grant me, great powers, and
a single autumn for fully ripened song
that, sated with the sweetness of my
playing, my heart may more willingly die.
The soul that, living, did not attain its divine
right cannot repose in the nether world.
But once what I am bent on, what is
holy, my poetry, is accomplished:
Be welcome then, stillness of the shadows’ world!
I shall be satisfied though my lyre will not
accompany me down there. Once I
lived like the gods, and more is not needed.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Ja, vergiß nur, daß es Menschen gibt, darbendes, angefochtenes, tausendfach geärgertes Herz! und kehre wieder dahin, wo du ausgingst, in die Arme der Natur, der wandellosen, stillen und schönen.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland

“What love and spirit give cannot be extorted. The state has always been made a hell by man's wanting to make it his heaven. The state is nothing but the coarse husk around the seed of life, the wall around the human fruits and flowers. Yet what good is a wall when the soil of our garden is parched? ... O inspiration, you will bring us the springtime of peoples again. The state cannot command your presence, but if it does not obstruct you, you will come.”
― Friedrich Holderlin

“Ein Gott ist der Mensch, wenn er träumt, ein Bettler, wenn er nachdenkt.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Thus the sons of earth now drink in
The fire of heaven without danger.
And it is our duty, poets, to stand
Bare-headed under the storms of God,
Grasping with our own hand
The Father's beam itself,
And to offer the gift of heaven,
Wrapped in song, to the people.

From “As On a Holiday” (“Wie Wenn am Feiertage”)”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown.”
― Friedrich Holderlin

“All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked,
And they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this:
That everything curls inward, like snakes,
Prophetic, dreaming on
The hills of heaven. And many things
Have to stay on the shoulders like a load
of failure. However the roads
Are bad. For the chained elements,
Like horses, are going off to the side,
And the old
Laws of the earth. And a longing
For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however
Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential.
Forwards, however, or backwards we will
Not look. Let us learn to live swaying
As in a rocking boat on the sea.”
― Friedrich Holderlin

“For the mindful god does detest untimely growth.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Denn sie, die uns das himmlische Feuer leihen, die Götter, schenken heiliges Leid uns auch.”
― Hölderlin

“What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Nah ist
Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst
Das Rettende auch.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“... ich kann kein Volk mir denken, das zerißner wäre, wie die Deutschen. Handwerker siehst du, aber keine Menschen, Priester, aber keine Menschen, Herrn und Knechte, Jungenudn gesetzte Leute, aber keine Menschen - ist das nicht wie ein Schlachtfeld, wo Hände und Arme und Gleider zerstückelt untereinander liegen ... ? Ein jeder treibt das Seine, wirst du sagen, und ich sage es auch. Nur muß er es mit ganzer Seele treiben, muß nicht jede Kraft in sich ersticken, wenn sie nicht gerade sich zu seinem Titel paßt ... und ist er in ein Fach gedrückt, wo gar der Geist nicht leben darf, so stoß ers mit Verachtung weg und lerne pflügen!”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“¿Qué son los siglos, comparados a ese instante en que dos seres se adivinan y se acercan?”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland