Heinrich Heine Quotes

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

Where words leave off, music begins.

"The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mechanical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little retired street of Königsberg, an old town on the north-eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time, and the neighbors knew that it was exactly half-past three o'clock when Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue called after him to this day the "Philosopher's Walk." Summer and winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudging anxiously behind Kant with a big umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence.

What a strange contrast did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! In sooth, had the citizens of Königsberg had the least presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him."

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

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.

Je hebt parels en diamanten
hebt alles wat je hartje begeert.
En óók nog de mooiste ogen.
M'n liefje wat wil je nog meer?

En op die aandoenlijke ogen
schreef ik een lied, keer op keer.
Een vlucht van gevleugelde woorden.
M'n liefje wat wil je nog meer?

Maar die 'aandoenlijke' ogen
op mij, ze deden zó'n zeer
dat jij me te gronde gericht hebt.
M'n liefje wat wil je nog meer?

(Seth Gaaikema)

Von allen Welten, die der Mensch erschaffen hat, ist die der Bücher die Gewaltigste.

Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned too.
( — 1823; Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.)

First, I thought, almost despairing,
This must crush my spirit now;
Yet I bore it, and am bearing-
Only do not ask me how.

The more i get to know people, the more i like dogs.

For the Greeks, beauty is truth; for the Hebrews, truth is beauty.

The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.

The moon, too, hid herself
Behind the clouds that darkly came over her;
High up roarèd the sea,
And then triumphantly stood in the heavens
The stars all-eternal.

But that age … exerts on us
An almost terrible charm,
Like the memory of things seen
And a life lived in dreams.

You're lovely as a flower,
So pure and fair to see;
I look at you, and sadness
Comes stealing over me.