22 Quotes by Friedrich Hölderlin

You wanted greater thingsBut love forces all of us downAnd sorrow bows us still harder.They bend us back where we began.Are there not in the hallowed nightAlso right things?Things that are straight and true?So I learned.For never, as mortal teachers do,Have you, my deities,Upholders of all thingsLed me with cautionOn level pathways.The gods say to humans,"Taste everythingAnd learn by that nourishmentTo give thanks for all thingsAnd know what it is to be free to quitAnd go where you like.

For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine.

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.

Wo aber die Gefahr ist, wächst,Das Rettende auch.But where danger is,salvation also blooms.

But now day breaks! I waited and saw it come,And what I saw, the hallowed, my word shall convey,For she, she herself, who is older than the agesAnd higher than the gods of Orient and Occident,Nature has now awoken amid the clang of arms,And from high Aether down to the low abyss,According to fixed law, begotten, as in the past, on holy Chaos,Delight, the all-creative,Delights in self-renewal.

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 exaltedOne works in their fields, think theyKnow 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 expandingpower will never force heaven.

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles livedBut there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together.

In gods and godhead only he can truly believe who himself is godlike.

Man kann auch in die Höhe fallen, so wie in die Tiefe. ("One can as well fall into height as into depth")