Friedrich Hölderlin Quotes

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.

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?

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.

Ein Gott ist der Mensch, wenn er träumt, ein Bettler, wenn er nachdenkt.

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.

For the mindful god does detest untimely growth.

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”)

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.

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.

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.

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

Denn sie, die uns das himmlische Feuer leihen, die Götter, schenken heiliges Leid uns auch.

¿Qué son los siglos, comparados a ese instante en que dos seres se adivinan y se acercan?

Nah ist
Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst
Das Rettende auch.

Good Advice You’ve 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.