Heinrich Heine Quotes

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.

Out of my own great woe
I make my little songs.

Full-blossoming moon! In thy fair light
Like liquid gold, the ocean gleams:
Like daylight’s clearness, yet charm’d into twilight,
Over the strand’s wide plain all is lying;
In the starless clear azure heavens
Hover the snowy clouds,
Like colossal figures of deities
Of glittering marble.
No, ’tis not so, no clouds can they be!
’Tis They themselves, the Gods...

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble dwelling with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, milk and butter of the freshest, flowers at my window, and a few fine tall trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did to me in their lifetimes. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies — but not before they have been hanged.

People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.

Какво е любовта – зъбобол на сърцето.

All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.

Don't send a poet to London.

Quali che siano le lacrime che si piangono, alla fine si finisce sempre per soffiarsi il naso

The ancient, tremulous woman who was sitting behind the stove opposite the big cupboard may have sat there for a quarter of a century, and her thoughts and feelings are closely interwoven with every corner of the stove and every carving on the cupboard. And the stove and cupboard are alive, for part of a human soul has entered into them.

"Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum.

Das küßte mich auf deutsch, und sprach auf deutsch
(Man glaubt es kaum,
Wie gut es klang) das Wort: "Ich liebe dich!"
Es war ein Traum."

With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe.

Christianity has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war. Should that subduing talisman — the cross — be shattered, a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent walk in the park.

Wenn man auch der protestantischen Kirche manche fatale Engsinnigkeit vorwirft, so muß man doch zu ihrem unsterblichen Ruhme bekennen: indem durch sie die freie Forschung in der christlichen Religion erlaubt und die Geister vom Joche der Autorität befreit wurden, hat die freie Forschung überhaupt in Deutschland Wurzel schlagen und die Wissenschaft sich selbständig entwickeln können. Die deutsche Philosophie, obgleich sie sich jetzt neben die protestantische Kirche stellt, ja sich über sie heben will, ist doch immer nur ihre Tochter; als solche ist sie immer in betreff der Mutter zu einer schonenden Pietät verpflichtet.

…near them grow dreamlike fairy-tale flowers whose leaves stir in the moonlight.