"The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths."

"One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres."

"The spirits that I summoned up I now can't rid myself of."

"We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us."

"Die Liebe herrscht nicht, aber sie bildet; und das ist mehr!"

"Untersuchen was ist, und nicht was behagt"

"A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent."

"A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them."

"In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug."

"Let the noble man Be generous and good, Tirelessly achieving What is just and useful: Let him be a model For those beings whom he surmises."

"Only mankind Can do the impossible: He can distinguish, He chooses and judges, He can give permanence To the moment."

"As great, everlasting, Adamantine laws Dictate, we must all Complete the cycles Of our existence."

"Noble be man, Helpful and good! For that alone Sets hims apart From every other creature On earth."

"Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind; Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm, Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm."

"When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash."

"Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world."

"One lives but once in the world."

"I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests."

"So gewiß ist der allein glücklich und groß, der weder zu herrschen noch zu gehorchen braucht, um etwas zu sein!"

"Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten."

"Instruction does much, but encouragement everything."

"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."

"Darling maiden, who can be Ever found to equal thee? To thy service joyfully Shall my life be pledged by me. Thy sweet eyes gleam tenderly, Like soft moonbeams o’er the sea; Lights of rosy harmony O’er thy red cheeks wander free."

"In the middle of the war there was Heine, there was Goethe, there was Schiller. I did posters for the German club, in the middle of the war. When I think back to how happy I was, studying German and flunking algebra, and I think what was going on for other Jewish teenagers on the other side of the world, I'm so puzzled by those dates."

"It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the most perfect idea of what a lyrical poet could be. In vain do I search through all the kingdoms of antiquity or of modern times for anything to resemble his sweet and passionate music. He possessed that divine wickedness, without which perfection itself becomes unthinkable to me,—I estimate the value of men, of races, according to the extent to which they are unable to conceive of a god who has not a dash of the satyr in him. And with what mastery he wields his native tongue! One day it will be said of Heine and me that we were by far the greatest artists of the German language that have ever existed, and that we left all the efforts that mere Germans made in this language an incalculable distance behind us."

"I sometimes dwell on the fact that there's one thing that time and humankind will not be able to take away from me, leaving me rich, richer than Croesus: the bliss that I derive from a Heine poem, from a Beethoven sonata or a DaVinci painting."

"Emotional sorrow has inspired many sublime lyrics, much profound insight and poetic exultation of a Byron, Shelley, Heine, and their kind."

"Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself."