Heinrich Heine famous quotes

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

#Dark #Night #Men

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Reading #Book #Evil

On the waves of the brook she dances by, The light, the lovely dragon-fly; She dances here, she dances there, The shimmering, glimmering flutterer fair. And many a foolish young beetle's impressed By the blue gauze gown in which she is dressed; They admire the enamel that decks her bright, And her elegant waist so slim and slight...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Light #Blue #Dragons

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Faith #Believe #Soul

There are more fools in the world than there are people.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Silly #Stupid People #Stupidity

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Ask Me

Matrimony; the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Marriage #Sea #Literature

Don't send a poet to London.
-- Heinrich Heine

#London #Poet

It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Beautiful #Vanity #Earth

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Flower #Feelings #Perfume

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Learning #School #Experience

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Book #Burned #Humans

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Science #Diversity #Political

The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Truth #Truth Love #Deepest Love

Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Inspirational #Book #Men

I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Book #Reading #Blessing

Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Men #Rocks #Poverty

He only profits from praise who values criticism.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Good Life #Envy #Gossip

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Silence #Eloquence

Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Writing #Dark #Animal

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

#Sleep #Atheism #Born

I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Character

A pine tree standeth lonely In the North on an upland bare; It standeth whitely shrouded With snow, and sleepeth there. It dreameth of a Palm tree Which far in the East alone, In the mournful silence standeth On its ridge of burning stone.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Lonely #Snow #Tree

What lies lurk in kisses.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Lying #Kissing

Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Sleep #Miracle #Lovely

God will forgive me. It's his job.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Forgiveness #Jobs #Crazy

Silence is the essential condition of happiness.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Silence #Essentials #Silence Is

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Long #People #Insulting

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Funny #Life #Education

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Self Esteem #Quality #Faults

Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Historical #Rothschild #Prophet

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged
-- Heinrich Heine

#Life #Death #Forgiveness

Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Heart #People #Literature

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

#Blow #Tears #Noses

Sweet May hath come to love us, Flowers, trees, their blossoms don; And through the blue heavens above us The very clouds move on.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Sweet #Flower #Moving

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

#Thinking #Weather #Broken

Woman is at once apple and serpent.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Apples #Serpent

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Book #People #Burning

You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world's goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Iron #World #Should

I call'd the devil, and he came, And with wonder his form did I closely scan; He is not ugly, and is not lame, But really a handsome and charming man. A man in the prime of life is the devil, Obliging, a man of the world, and civil; A diplomatist too, well skill'd in debate, He talks quite glibly of church and state.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Men #Skills #Devil

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.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Dog #Monsters #Treasure

Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Freedom #Religion

As the moon's fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Ocean #Moving #Moon

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Hypocrisy #Support #Republic

Tell me who first did kisses suggest? It was a mouth all glowing and blest; It kissed and it thought of nothing beside. The fair month of May was then in its pride, The flowers were all from the earth fast springing, The sun was laughing, the birds were singing.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Flower #Pride #Kissing

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Praying #Lord #Britain

Glow-worms on the ground are moving, As if in the torch-dance circling.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Moving #Torches #Worms

And the dancing has begun now, And the Dancings whirl round gaily In the waltz's giddy mazes, And the ground beneath them trembles.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Dancing #Mazes #Giddy

Our sweetest hopes rise blooming. And then again are gone, They bloom and fade alternate, And so it goes rolling on. I know it, and it troubles My life, my love, my rest, My heart is wise and witty, And it bleeds within my breast.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Wise #Witty #Philosophical

The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast, and when I carol aloud, I am answered by a thousand-fold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales. Spring hath sent them to awaken Earth from her morning slumber, and Earth trembles with ecstasy, her flowers are hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Nature #Morning #Spring

Perhaps already I am dead, And these perhaps are phantoms vain;— These motley phantasies that pass At night through my disordered brain. Perhaps with ancient heathen shapes, Old faded gods, this brain is full; Who, for their most unholy rites, Have chosen a dead poet's skull...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Night #Skulls #Brain

Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Powerful #Love Life #Blessing

The beauteous dragonfly's dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body's bright splendour, And also her figure so slender...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Dancing #Dresses #Dragonflies

The dragon-fly is dancing,— Is on the water glancing, She flits about with nimble wing, The flickering, fluttering, restless thing. Besotted chafers all admire Her light-blue, gauze-like, neat attire; They laud her blue complexion, And think her shape perfection...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Thinking #Light #Blue

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling, and breathe forth their sweetest odours. Flow forth, ye perfumes of my heart, and seek beyond these mountains the dear one of my dreams!
-- Heinrich Heine

#Dream #Flower #Heart

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Stars #Mistake #Night

But a day must come when the fire of youth will be quenched in my veins, when winter will dwell in my heart, when his snow flakes will whiten my locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Death #Lonely #Lying

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...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Stars #Angel #Clouds

The cloudlets are lazily sailing O'er the blue Atlantic sea; And mid the twilight there hovers A shadowy figure o'er me...
-- Heinrich Heine

#Twilight #Blue #Sea

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.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Hands #Dancing #Together

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Hero #Heroism #Clown

The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them, And with them merrily play.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Fall #Play #Apples

The lotus flower is troubled At the sun's resplendent light; With sunken head and sadly She dreamily waits for the night.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Flower #Night #Light

Laughter is wholesome. God is not so dull as some people make out. Did not He make the kitten to chase its tail.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Laughter #People #Tails

Every age thinks its battle the most important of all.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Thinking #Important #Age

Immortality—dazzling idea! who first imagined thee! Was it some jolly burgher of Nuremburg, who with night-cap on his head, and white clay pipe in mouth, sat on some pleasant summer evening before his door, and reflected in all his comfort, that it would be right pleasant, if, with unextinguishable pipe, and endless breath, he could thus vegetate onwards for a blessed eternity? Or was it a lover, who in the arms of his loved one, thought the immortality-thought, and that because he could think and feel naught beside!—Love! Immortality!
-- Heinrich Heine

#Death #Summer #Blessed

Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Time #Morning #Rays

Sweet May lies fresh before us, To life the young flowers leap, And through the Heaven's blue o'er us The rosy cloudlets sweep.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Sweet #Lying #Flower

The butterfly long loved the beautiful rose, And flirted around all day; While round him in turn with her golden caress, Soft fluttered the sun's warm ray.... I know not with whom the rose was in love, But I know that I loved them all. The butterfly, rose, and the sun's bright ray, The star and the bird's sweet call.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Beautiful #Sweet #Stars

Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Literature #Morgues

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Past #Men #Opinion

Man,--the aristocrat amongst the animals.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Animal #Men

Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Giving #Soul #Utterance

The fountain of love is the rose and the lily, the sun and the dove.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Love #Rose #Lilies

My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Beautiful #Lying #Ocean

As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of their country, yea, of the whole earth. The hearts of great men are the stars of earth; and doubtless when one looks down from above upon our planet, these hearts are seen to send forth, a silvery light just like the stars of heaven.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Country #Stars #Heart

Graves they say are warm'd by glory; Foolish words and empty story.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Stories #Glory #Foolish

When'er into thine eyes I see, All pain and sorrow fly from me. [Ger., Wenn ich in deine Augen sch' So schwindet all' mein Leid und Weh.]
-- Heinrich Heine

#Pain #Eye #Sorrow

No talent, but yet a character. [Ger., Kein talent, doch ein Charakter.]
-- Heinrich Heine

#Character #Talent

Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Song #Spring #Poetry

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.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Style #Found

Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature's grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Greatness #Men #Soul

Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Freedom #Liberty #Hebrew

The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad
-- Heinrich Heine

#Real #Taken #Tired

I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Hero #Men #Laughing

Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Women #Flower #Pretty Woman

Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy--death.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Spiritual #War #Men

Thought is invisible nature.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Invisible

It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Sympathy #Grief #Tears

God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Order #Enemy #May

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.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Art #Exercise #Order

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Humanity #Progress #Age

He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Lying #Fighting #Cutting

I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Battle #Half #Literature

The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Clever #Gazelles #Mood

Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Sleep #Night #Thinking

The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Archer #Arrows #Bows

Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Law #Essence #Doubt

Ich glaube sogar, durch Leidensk a« mpfe k o« nnten dieTiere zu Menschen werden. I believe that by suffering even animals could be made human.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Believe #Animal #Suffering

A lonely fir-tree is standing On a northern barren height; It sleeps, and the ice and snow-drift Cast round it a garment of white.
-- Heinrich Heine

#Lonely #Sleep #Ice