Playwrights From Germany

"In Germany, the judicial system has been the whore of the German princes for centuries."

"The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday."

"The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all."

"The sin is in our thoughts."

"You women could make someone fall in love even with a lie."

"The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom."

"They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same."

"Government must be a transparent garment which tightly clings to the people’s body."

"The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers."

"Murder begins where self-defense ends."

"We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces."

"The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries."

"Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it."

"The power of the people and the power of reason are one."

"Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun."

"I said Philosophy might the rather maintain its place, as healing art for the soul, because then, the well would know that they had nothing to do with it. But as all arts love to make themselves more important than they are, so this art too has found means to impose itself upon all the world as indispensable. Like its sister art, which ministers to the body, it will not allow any one to be entirely well."

"Nichts halb zu thun ist edler Geister Art."

"The wise Theophrastus lived ninety years, and when he came to die, he complained against Nature because "she has given man so little time to live, and because an honest fellow must die at the very moment when he has begun to comprehend a little the art of life." But — let me remark in passing — I am very far from believing that Theophrastus made the foolish speech which is imputed to him. The people around his bed did not exactly understand what he said, and then some schoolmaster came along, a good while after, and tried to make sense of it, and made nonsense. I would bet that Theophrastus meant neither more nor less than this; that he regretted he had not been wise enough, sixty or seventy years before, to see that he might have saved himself the trouble of studying, as art and science, what Nature would have taught him far better and more surely, without study, if he had had the simplicity of mind to heed her instruction. It was not innocent Nature but his own folly that he blamed, as most men are wont to do in his case; although they might as well let it alone; for what is the use of repentance when one has time left for amendment?"

"Ein Wahn, der mich beglückt, Ist eine Wahrheit werth, die mich zu Boden drückt."

"Noch einmahl sattelt mir den Hippogryfen, ihr Musen, Zum Ritt ins alte romantische Land!"

"Wer keine Blume mehr liebt, dem ist alle Liebe und Gottesfurcht verloren."

"Die Liebe wintert nicht; Nein! nein! Ist und bleibt Fruhlingesschein."

"Das wahrhaft Schöne, Große und Erhabene, so wie es uns in Erstaunen und Verwunderung setzt, überrascht uns doch nicht als etwas Fremdes, Unerhörtes und Niegesehenes, sondern unser eigenstes Wesen wird uns in solchen Augenblicken klar, unsre tiefsten Erinnerungen werden erweckt, und unsre nächsten Empfindungen lebendig gemacht."

"Lessing, who chafed under the sense of various limitations, makes one of his characters say: No one must do anything. A clever pious man said: If a man wills something, he must do it. A third, who was, it is true, an educated man, added: Will follows upon insight. The whole circle of knowledge, will, and necessity was thus believed to have been completed. But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, determines what he shall do and what he shall leave undone, and so it is that there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action."

"Lessing was the literary Arminius who emancipated our theatre from that foreign rule. He showed us the vapidness, the ridiculousness, the tastelessness, of those apings of the French stage, which itself was but an imitation of the Greek. But not only by his critiques, but also through his own works of art, did he become the founder of modern German original literature. All the paths of the intellect, all the phases of life, did this man pursue with disinterested enthusiasm. Art, theology, antiquarianism, poetry, dramatic criticism, history, — he studied these all with the same zeal and with the same aim. In all his works breathes the same grand social idea, the same progressive humanity, the same religion of reason, whose John he was, and whose Messiah we yet await."

"One seldom finds an author who is so pleasant to have to do with as Lessing. And how comes it to be so? Because, I think, he is so sure of himself. All this trivial and comfortable intercourse between a distinguished man and one less distinguished: that the one is a genius and master, the other pupil, messenger, slave and so forth, is here excluded. Even if I strove with might and main to become Lessing’s disciple, I could not, for Lessing has prevented it. Just as he himself is free, so I imagine that he desires to make everyone else free in relation to himself. He begs to be excused the exhalations and gaucheries of the disciple, fearing to be made ridiculous through repetitioners who reproduce what is said like a prattling echo."

"Eben die Bahn, aus welcher das Geschlecht zu seiner Vollkommenheit gelangt, muß jeder einzelne Mensch (der früher, der später) erst durchlaufen haben."

"Es ist unendlich schwer, zu wissen, wenn und wo man bleiben soll, und Tausenden für einen ist das Ziel ihres Nachdenkens die Stelle, wo sie des Nachdenkens müde geworden."

"The worst of superstitions is to think One's own most bearable."

"I, who ne'er Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing, And that for others. Borrowing's much the same As begging; just as lending upon usury Is much the same as thieving."

"Der Mensch, wo ist er her? Zu schlecht für einen Gott, zu gut fürs Ungefähr."

"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."

"The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say: Father, I will take this one—the pure Truth is for You alone."

"... Shakespeare conquered Germany with his word and thought: then England, for the first time, had a voice on the Rhine and by the Danube, and became a force in the growth of German culture. The man who was chiefly instrumental in bringing this about was Lessing. Many educated Germans felt about Shakespeare as he felt, and some of our literary men were working in the same direction in which he worked; but Lessing produced the strongest argument."

"Lessing opposes what I would call quantifying oneself into a qualitative decision; he contests the direct transition from historical reliability to a decision on an eternal happiness. He does not deny that what is said in the Scriptures about miracles and prophecies is just as reliable as other historical reports, in fact, is as reliable as historical reports in general can be. But now, if they are only as reliable as this why are they treated as if they were infinitely more reliable-precisely because one wants to base on them the acceptance of a doctrine that is the condition for an eternal happiness, that is, to base an eternal happiness on them. Like everyone else, Lessing is willing to believe that an Alexander who subjugated all of Asia did live once, but who, on the basis of this belief, would risk anything or great, permanent worth, the loss of which would be irreparable?"

"Denn zu einem großen Manne gehört beides: Kleinigkeiten als Kleinigkeiten, und wichtige Dinge als wichtige Dinge zu behandeln."

"Perlen bedeuten Tränen."

"Besserer Rat kommt über Nacht."

"Und ein Vergnügen erwarten, ist auch ein Vergnügen."

"Lessing had a genuine French talent, and, as writer, went most assiduously to the French school. He knows well how to arrange and display his wares in his shop-window. Without this true art his thoughts, like the objects of them, would have remained rather in the dark, nor would the general loss be great. His art, however, has taught many (especially the last generation of German scholars) and has given enjoyment to a countless number. It is true his disciples had no need to learn from him, as they often did, his unpleasant tone with its mingling of petulance and candour.—Opinion is now unanimous on Lessing as “lyric poet,” and will some day be unanimous on Lessing as “dramatic poet.”"

"If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truths. That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason. [...] That, then, is the ugly, broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap."

"There is a nimiety — a too-muchness — in all Germans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable."

"The soldiers who faced one another along the Western Front were drawn from remarkably similar societies. On both sides there were industrial workers and farm labourers. On both sides there were aristocratic senior officers and middle-class junior officers. On both sides there were Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Anyone seeking fundamental differences of national character will look in vain in the records of the trenches. There could be no better illustration of this point than four of the finest novels written about the war by former soldiers - Henri Barbusse's Under Fire, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Frederic Manning's Middle Parts of Fortune and Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade - which depict the experience of service in the ranks in almost interchangeable ways."

"I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me."

"No, we are not related. No, we are not related. Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."

"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

"But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?"

"Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp. "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other—" "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended." "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you." "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh."

"A hospital alone shows what war is."

"It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her."