Friedrich Hölderlin Quotes

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.

"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.

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.

Living tones are we, we sound together in thy harmony.

El hombre es un dios cuando sueña y un mendigo cuando reflexiona

When brother fled from brother, when lovers passed
Each other by in ignorance, when fathers failed
To recognize their sons, when human words no more Were understood, nor human laws, that was when
The meaning of it all assailed me and I trembled:
It was my nation’s parting god!

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.

It is beautiful to unfold our souls
And our short lives

"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."

These fruits are ripe, dipped in fire,
Cooked and sampled here on earth.

I'm building a grave for my heart, that it may rest; I spin a cocoon around myself, because everywhere it's winter, in blissfull memories I wrap myself against the storm.

Before either of us knew it, we belonged to each other.

I call on Fate to give me back my soul.

What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?

Now we were standing close to the summit's rim, gazing out into the endless East.