"Oaks shall be rent; the Word shall shatter — Yea, on that fiery day, the Crown, Even the palace walls shall totter, And domes and spires come crashing down."

"What! Think you that my flashes show me Only in lightnings to excel? Believe me, friends, you do not know me, For I can thunder quite as well."

"Oh what lies there are in kisses! And their guile so well prepared! Sweet the snaring is; but this is Sweeter still, to be ensnared."

"My songs, they say, are poisoned. How else, love, could it be? Thou hast, with deadly magic, Poured poison into me."

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

"What an awful book the Corpus Juris is, this Bible of selfishness! I've always found the Roman code as detestable as the Romans themselves. These robbers want to safeguard their swag, and they seek to protect by law what they have plundered with the sword; hence the robber became a combination of the most odious kind, soldier and lawyer in one. Truly, we owe the theory of property, which was formerly a fact only, to these Roman thieves; and the much vaunted Roman Law on which all our present-day legislations and state institutions are based is nothing but the development of this theory in all its pernicious implications, in spite of the fact that this Law is diametrically opposed to religion, morals, common humanity and reason."

"If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world."

"Bien sûr, il me pardonnera; c'est son métier. [Of course he [God] will forgive me; that's his job.]"

"Rossini! divino Maestro!"

"So we keep asking, over and over, Until a handful of earth Stops our mouths — But is that an answer?"

"One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged."

"Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid."

"No talent, but a character."

"The future smells of Russian leather, of blood, of godlessness and of much whipping. I advise our grandchildren to come into the world with very thick skin on their backs."

"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."

"If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses."

"Die Menschen in jener alten Zeit hatten Überzeugungen, wir Neueren haben nur Meinungen, und es gehört etwas mehr als eine bloße Meinung dazu, um so einen gotischen Dom aufzurichten."

"Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance."

"Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea."

"He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind. But a great man will never so far contradict his own feelings as to see, or, it may be, increase, with cold-blooded indifference, the misfortunes of his fellow country-men."

"Don't send a poet to London."

"Every woman is the gift of a world to me."

"Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

"Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland. Der Eichenbaum Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft. Es war ein Traum.Das küßte mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch (Man glaubt es kaum Wie gut es klang) das Wort: "Ich liebe dich!" Es war ein Traum."

"At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it — but I did bear it. The question remains: how?"

"Du bist wie eine Blume, So hold und schön und rein; Ich schau dich an, und Wehmut Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein."

"Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Dass ich so traurig bin; Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn."

"Out of my own great woe I make my little songs."

"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."

"Full-blossoming moon! In thy fair light Like liquid gold, the ocean gleams: Like daylight’s clearness, yet charm’d into twilight, Over the strand’s wide plain all is lying; In the starless clear azure heavens Hover the snowy clouds, Like colossal figures of deities Of glittering marble. No, ’tis not so, no clouds can they be! ’Tis They themselves, the Gods..."

"Indeed they have wearied me greatly, And made me exceedingly sad, One half with their prose so wretched, The other with poetry bad. Their terrible discord has scatter’d What little senses I had, One half with their prose so wretched, The other with poetry bad. But ’mongst the whole army of scribblers, They most have stirr’d up my bile, Who write in neither prosaic Nor true poetical style."

"When I am with my sweetheart kind, A happy youth am I; So great the wealth within my mind, I the whole world could buy. But when her swanlike arms I quit, In that sad hour of pain, Away my boasted wealth doth flit, And I am poor again."