Friedrich Hölderlin Quotes

"You wanted greater things
But love forces all of us down
And sorrow bows us still harder.
They bend us back where we began.

Are there not in the hallowed night
Also right things?
Things that are straight and true?

So I learned.
For never, as mortal teachers do,
Have you, my deities,
Upholders of all things
Led me with caution
On level pathways.

The gods say to humans,
"Taste everything
And learn by that nourishment
To give thanks for all things
And know what it is to be free to quit
And go where you like.

But friend, we come too late. It's true that the gods live,
But up over our heads, up in a different world.
They function endlessly up there, and seem to care little
If we live or die, so much do they avoid us.
A weak vessel cannot hold them forever; humans can
Endure the fullness of the gods only at times. Therefore
Life itself becomes a dream about them.

That which is individual conflicts with the pure which it apprehends

Hield mij aan't leven der mensen dit hart maar niet meer gebonden,
dat van liefde niet aflaat, hoe graag zou ik mét u hier wonen!

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.

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.

To be one with all – that is the life of the divinity, that is the heaven of man.

For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine.

The tragically moderate weariness of the times, whose object is of no real interest to the heart, follows the pull of the spirit of the times without the least moderation and this spirit appears then as something wild and not, like a ghost in daylight, sparing mad at all, but quite pitiless, as the spirit of the always alive unwritten wilderness and the world of the dead.

Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen, ist alles. - Fragment von Hyperion, aus: Neue Thalia, Vierter Band, Hrsg. Friedrich Schiller, Georg Joachim Göschen, Leipzig 1793,

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?

Wherein lies the danger, grows also the saving power.

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.

Who the deepest has thought loves what is most alive.

Denn sie, die uns das himmlische Feuer leihn,
Die Götter schenken heiliges Leid uns auch,
Drum bleibe dies. Ein Sohn der Erde
Schein ich; zu lieben gemacht, zu leiden.