Heinrich Heine

Das war ein vorspeil nur; That was only a prelude; dort wo man Buecher verbrennt, Where one burns books, vebrennt man auch am Ende One will also burn people Menchen. Eventually.

Life is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.

I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.

Oh, they loved dearly: their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss.

Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

God will forgive me. It's his job." Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it.

I do not murmur, even if my heart break.

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.

Lo, sleep is good, better is death--in sooth The best of all were never to be born.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions.

In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.

Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.

Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.

Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

I have a most peaceable disposition. My desires are for a modest hut, a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, very fresh milk and butter, flowers in front of my window and a few pretty trees by my door. And should the good Lord wish to make me really happy, he will allow me the pleasure of seeing about six or seven of my enemies hanged upon those trees.

There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.