German Romanticism Quotes

“Hölderlin's sense of loss and destitution was not simply due to a personal predilection for suffering, but was part of a larger cultural phenomenon that arose from powerful currents seething under the Enlightenment—an increasing alienation from nature and a growing sense of disenchantment in the face of a triumphant rationality and waning traditions and values. Hölderlin was not alone in perceiving these changes and experiencing them deeply. Hegel, for example, famously wrote of alienated consciousness, and Schiller described modern human beings as "stunted plants, that show only a feeble vestige of their nature." Hölderlin, for his part, reacted to these currents with an almost overwhelming longing for lost wholeness.”
― Friedrich Holderlin, Odes and Elegies

“For too long has everything divine been utilized,
And all the heavenly powers, the kindly ones, thrown away,
Consumed for kicks by thankless,
Cunning men, who, when the exalted

One works in their fields, think they
Know the daylight and the Thunderer,
And their telescope might see them all and
Count and name all the stars in heaven;

But the Father covers our eyes with holy
Night so we might remain.
He loves no wildness! Our expanding
power will never force heaven.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Odes and Elegies

“I am dead to the world’s tumult,
And rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love, in my song!”
― Friedrich Rückert