340 Quotes by Heinrich Heine

Seriousness shows itself more majestically when laughter leads the way.

Sweet May lies fresh before us, To life the young flowers leap, And through the Heaven’s blue o’er us The rosy cloudlets sweep.

The lotus flower is troubled At the sun’s resplendent light; With sunken head and sadly She dreamily waits for the night.

Wherever a great soul utters its thoughts, there is Golgatha.

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

If thou lookest on the lime-leaf, Thou a heart’s form will discover; Therefore are the lindens ever Chosen seats of each fond lover.

He always maintained that we fear something because we recognize it as fearsome through rational inferences, and that only the reason had any power; the heart had none. While I ate well and drank well, he kept demonstrating to me the advantages of reason... In striving after the positive, the poor man had argued away all life’s splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave.

One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies – but not before they have been hanged.

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.