36 Quotes by E.T.A. Hoffmann

It is the phantom of our own self whose deep affinity and profound influence on our state of mind either damns us to hell or uplifts us into heaven.

We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone.

Je mehr Kultur, desto weniger Freiheit, das ist ein wahres Wort.

Oh!” exclaimed Marie at last, “who does the charming little fellow in the tree belong to, dearest Papa?”“He should work hard for all of you, dear child,” her father replied. “He can bite the hardest of nuts and crack them open for you, and he belongs to Luise as much as to you and Fritz.

It is an old-established custom for the hero of a story, when overcome by violent emotion, to run out into the forest, or at least to some solitary glade. This custom is a good one, because it prevails in real life. Mr Peregrinus Tyss therefore had no altenative but to run in a straight line from his house on the Horsemarket until he had left the town behind him and reached a nearby glade.

She was not too tall, and of a voluptuous build, so that my eyes wandered amid many charms that hitherto had been strangers to them.

Es ist auch gewiss, fügt Lothar hinzu, dass die dunkle psychische Macht, haben wir uns durch uns selbst ihr hingegeben, oft fremde Gestalten, die die Außenwelt uns in den Weg wirft, in unser Inneres hineinzieht, sodass wir selbst nur den Geist entzünden, der, wie wir in wunderlicher Täuschung glauben, aus jener Gestalt spricht.

Haben wir festen (...) Sinn genug, um fremdes feindliches Einwirken als solches stets zu erkennen und den Weg (...) ruhigen Schrittes zu verfolgen, so geht wohl jene unheimliche Macht unter in dem vergeblichen Ringen nach der Gestaltung, die unser eigenes Spiegelbild sein sollte.

It is certainly true enough that Mr. Peregrinus had many strange qualities which people found hard to accept.