Poets From Germany

"In waste God hides the gold, accept what He may send, The great within the small, though we don't comprehend."

"God far exceeds all words that we can here express In silence He is heard, in silence worshiped best"

"No thought for the hereafter have the wise, for on this very earth they live in paradise"

"If neither love nor pain Will ever touch thy heart, Then only God's in thee, And then in God thou art"

"All heaven's glory is within and so is hell's fierce burning. You must yourself decide in which direction you are turning"

"Unless you find paradise at your own center, there is not the smallest chance That you may enter"

"No man has known perfect felicity, Until his otherness is drowned in unity"

"Though Christ a thousand times in Bethleham be born And not within thyself, Thy soul will be forlorn"

"The Cross on Golgotha Thou lookest to in vain, Unless within thine heart It be set up again"

"If thou dost love a Something, Man, Thou lovest naught that doth abide. God is not This nor That—do thou Leave Somethings utterly aside"

"The World doth not imprison thee. Thou art thyself the World, and there, Within thyself, thou hold'st thyself Thy self-imprisoned Prisoner."

"Travel within thyself! The Stone Philosophers with wisest arts Have vainly sought, cannot be found By travelling in foreign parts."

"Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem A thousand times his Mother bore, Is he not born again in thee Then art thou lost for evermore."

"The Wise Man is that which he hath. The precious Pearl of Paradise Wouldst thou not lose, then must thou be Thyself that Pearl of greatest price."

"He has not lived in vain who learns to be unruffled by loss, by gain, by, joy, by pain."

"God is an utter Nothingness, Beyond the touch of Time and Place: The more thou graspest after Him, The more he fleeth thy embrace."

"Naught ever can be known in God: One and Alone Is He. To know Him, Knower must be one with Known."

"Ah, were men's voices like the wood-birds' melody— Each happy note distinct, but all in harmony!"

"The All proceedeth from the One, And into One must All regress: If otherwise, the All remains Asunder-riven manyness."

"How short our span! If you once realized how brief, you would refrain from causing any beast or man the smallest grief, the slightest pain."

"The Thought and Deed of Deity Are of such richness and extent That It remaineth to Itself An Undiscovered Continent."

"A Loaf holds many grains of corn And many myriad drops the Sea: So is God's Oneness Multitude And that great Multitude are we."

"All Heaven is within thee, Man, And all of Hell within thy heart: What thou dost choose and will to have, That hast thou wheresoe'er thou art."

"O Man, as long as you exist, know, have, and cherish, You have not been delivered, believe me, of your burden."

"How fleeting is this world yet it survives. It is ourselves that fade from it and our ephemeral lives."

"Christ could be born a thousand times in Bethlehem – but all in vain until He is born in me."

"Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand. Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend? It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be? I must, transcending God, into the desert flee"

"Christ was born a man for me, for me he died - Unless I become God through Him, His birth is mocked His death denied"

"True prayer requires no word, no chant no gesture, no sound. It is communion, calm and still with our own godly Ground"

"Else von Freytag-Loringhoven is the first Dadaiste in New York and [...] the Little Review has discovered her. This movement should capture American like a prairie fire."

"[The Baroness was] a citizen of terror, a contemporary without a country."

"Everything emotional in America becomes a mere show and make-believe. Americans are trained to invest money, are said to take even desperate chances on that, yet never do they invest [in] beauty nor take desperate chances on that. With money they try to buy beauty--after it has died--famishing--with grimace. Beauty is ever dead in America."

"[The Baroness] is not a futurist. She is the future."

"People were afraid of her because she was undismayed about the facts of life--any of them--all of them."

"I had sexlogic implanted and used it."

"We were people of a circle of supposed highcultivated life conduct by intellectual morality--higher than society in its hypocritical meshes."

"[I had] pushed through to a spiritual sex: art--that nobody protects as readily as a charming love body of flesh."

"Every artist is crazy with respect to ordinary life."

"All who want me would like to eat me up, But I am too expansive and am open to all sides, desire this here and that there."

"You can think all kinds of things. But you can't know for sure."

"There’s an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so."

"Hunger devours nearly all the artistry."

"There (Kaschau) the mountains stare down through our heads until we die."

"Perhaps we had to stand so long as to stop the time in motion. Our bones became heavy as iron. When the flesh on your body disappears,your bones become a burden, and the ground pulls you down."

"I don't know if I can't sleep because I am trying to recall the objects, or whether I struggle to recall them because I can't sleep."

"Hunger is not a bunker or a bed frame, otherwise it could be measured. Hunger is not an object."

"Riding somewhere was always a happy thing. First of all: as long as you're moving, you haven't arrived. As long as you haven't arrived, you don't have to work. Riding in truck gives you time to recover. Second: when you ride, you come to some place that couldn't care less about you. you can't be yelled at or beaten by a tree. Under a tree, yes but the tree can't help that."

"No novels, since you just read them once and never again."

"You can't rearrange freshly fallen snow, you can't fix snow so it looks untouched. You can rework earth, and sand and even grass if you try hard enough. Water takes care of itself, because it swallows everything and flows back together once it's done swallowing. And air is always in place because you can't see it. Everything but snow would have kept quiet."

"The time for eating otrach orach is over. But not the hunger, which is always greater than we are."