non-fiction-authors-from-germany

"Sunt Angli graves ut Germani, magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agnimi secum trahunt, quibus in sinistro brachio scuta ex argento facta appendunt, et non immerito vexantur illos caudas a tergo habere. In saltationibus et arte musica excellunt. Sunt enim agiles et alacres, licet crassiores corporibus quam Galli. Mediam capitis partem capillos detondent, utroque latere illaeso. Sunt boni nautae et insignes pyratae, astuti, fallaces, et furaces. Londini singulis annis ultra, sicuti vulgo fertur, suspenduntur. Decapitatio minoris apud ipsos est infamiae quam strangulatio. Ire prope murum honoratior est locus. Frequens falconum et accipitrum apud nobiles in venationibus usus. In edendo civiliores Gallis, parcius utuntur pane, carnibus vero largius, quas optime assant. In potum copiose immittunt saccarum. Tegumenta lectorum sunt tapetia, etiam apud rusticos. Laborant frequenter lepra, alba vulgo dicta, quam primis Normannorum temporibus in Angliam irrepsisse fama est. In aedibus duas plaerunque contignationes habent, excepto Londino, ubi tres, raro quatuor, reperiuntur. Aedificant ex ligno vel, qui lautioris sunt fortunae, ex coctis lateribus. Tecta habent depressioria, quae ditiores plumbo tegunt."

"Sunt potentes in praeliis, undiquaque debellant adversarios, nullumque penitus patiuntur iugum servitutis. Delectantur quoque valde sonitibus, qui ipsis aures implent, uti explosionibus tormentorum, tympanis et campanarum boatu, ita ut Londini multi qui se inebriaverint turrem unam vel alteram exercitii causa ascendant et per horas aliquot campandis signum dent. Si quem exterum egregia forma et statura ornatum vident dolore dicunt quod non sit homo Anglicus, vulgo 'Englishmen'."

"The Negro problem is a white man's problem."

"The rising sense of history would gradually transform the Roman marble quarry into a vast open-air museum where the unlearned touring public could discover the past. [...] The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology, herald of this ever-widening public significance, was Johann Joachim Winckelmann."

"So wie die Tiefe des Meers allezeit ruhig bleibt, die Oberfläche mag noch so wüten, ebenso zeiget der Ausdruck in den Figuren der Griechen bei allen Leidenschaften eine große und gesetzte Seele."

"Der gute Geschmack, welcher sich mehr und mehr durch die Welt ausbreitet, hat sich angefangen zuerst unter dem griechischen Himmel zu bilden. Alle Erfindungen fremder Völker kamen gleichsam nur als der erste Same nach Griechenland, und nahmen eine andere Natur und Gestalt an in dem Lande, welches Minerva, sagt man, vor allen Ländern, wegen der gemäßigten Jahreszeiten, die sie hier angetroffen, den Griechen zur Wohnung angewiesen, als ein Land welches kluge Köpfe hervorbringen würde."

"Die Nachahmung des Schönen der Natur ist entweder auf einen einzelnen Vorwurf gerichtet, oder sie sammlet die Bemerkungen aus verschiedenen einzelnen, und bringet sie in eins. Jenes heißt eine ähnliche Kopie, ein Porträt machen; es ist der Weg zu holländischen Formen und Figuren. Dieses aber ist der Weg zum allgemeinen Schönen und zu idealischen Bildern desselben; und derselbe ist es, den die Griechen genommen haben."

"A Philhllene of extraordinary passion, [Winckelmann] loved every aspect of his image of Greece, seeing its two dominant essences as liberty and youth. According to him Greece epitomized freedom, while Egyptian culture had been stunted by its monarchism and conservatism and was the symbol of rigid authority and stagnation — which also happened to be non-European. In his mind, the Greek city-states contained the liberty without which it was impossible to create great art. Winckelmann, and his followers, loved this liberty and youth for their freshness and vitality. Yet he insisted upon the soft gentleness of Greek art, and the ‘noble simplicity’ and ‘serene greatness’ of Greek culture as a whole, which he saw as the result of the equable Greek climate. Moreover, central to his love of Greece was his appreciation of Greek homosexuality. Winckelmann himself was homosexual, and the major homosexual strand which has persisted in modern Hellenism has continued to be associated with him."

"Die Warheit zu sagen, so höret oder siehet man selten einen Streit swischen ihnen; es trauen die fremdesten Leute einander mehr, als in Europa die Bekannten. Man ist auch viel aufrichtiger und liebreicher gegeneinander als in Teutschland, darum leben unsere Americaner viel ruhiger und friedsamer als die Europäer zusammen, und dieses alles macht die Freyheit, worinnen alle einander gleich sind."

"It is also important to bear in mind that this present struggle, tremendous and unique as it may seem, is not the first of its kind, but is really nothing other than the present phase of a contest which has been going on between East and West for thousands of years. Action on the part of one side has always immediately called forth a reaction on the part of the other, and one may rightly doubt whether the Occident has always supplied the action, and the Orient the response, as is now the case, or whether the initiative has not rather changed from one side to the other in the course of history."

"If the West’s roots lay in Griechentum, he wrote, “‘... [our western culture] has also been influenced and made fruitful by the Orient, in many and lasting ways, and that ought not to be forgotten or left unsaid. It was, precisely, German scholars whose hard work established these facts and contributed the foundations for a truly historical, and comprehensive, understanding of European cultural development.’"

"We console ourselves, for the most part, with the superiority of our cultivation, which we consider to be qualitatively ‘higher,’... One reveres the uniqueness of Greek Geist, but with closer contact with this Asian world one cannot help raising the suspicion that our feelings of superiority are built on the quicksand of ignorance."

"That classical philology received comparative linguistics with mistrust and doubt was very natural. The newborn younger sister threatened to pull the painstakingly prepared ground from under the feet of the elder, in giving her to understand, you have wandered in darkness up until now; I will enlighten you. Few trusted these voices at the beginning, many closed their ears to the sirens’ songs...’"

"Theologians like F. C. Baur resisted and followed Creuzer, insisting instead on a universal diffusionary history with its roots in the Orient. In his own two-volume Symbolik und Mythologie of 1824-5, Baur argued that world history was at once “‘a revelation of the divine (der Gottheit)” and “the evolution of Consciousness,” and neither of these processes had begun in Europe. Using Creuzer, Genesis, and the Zend Avesta, Baur traced the formation of the first mythologies back to a ‘‘primeval seat” [Ursiz] in “the Edenic highlands of Central Asia” between the Jaxartes and the Oxus, Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Stressing the similarities between religious ideas across cultures, Baur readily admitted Europe’s dependence on the Orient for its population and ‘‘a great portion of its culture.’’ This also allowed him to lay the foundations for what he believed to be a scientific history of religious one philosophy, one which would put the evolution of Christianity into proper perspective — without compromising its unique truth."

"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty – that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult."

"Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God."

"Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war."

"The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their Army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint."

"They met near a city called Augury, where they fought desperately. Weyasit had quite thirty thousand men of White Tartary, whom he placed in the van at the battle. They went over to Temerlin; then they had two encounters, but neither could overcome the other. Now Tämerlin had thirty-two trained elephants at the battle, and ordered, after mid-day, that they should be brought into the battle. This was done, and they attacked each other; but Weyasit took to flight, and went with at least one thousand horsemen to a mountain. Tamerlin surrounded the mountain so that he could not move, and took him."

"Then each was ordered to kill his own prisoners, and for those who did not wish to do so the king appointed others in their place. Then they took my companions and cut off their heads, and when it came to my turn, the king's son saw me and ordered that I should be left alive, and I was taken to the other boys, because none under twenty years of age were killed, and I was scarcely sixteen years old."

"If I have not been able to write well, I have at any rate written truthfully, using as authorities those who are best informed about the subject."

"The development of human thought and achievement, as a whole, has not been, as commonly supposed, a continual upward progression, nor even the equivalent of a continuous series of ascertained results. Thoughts and inventions, which seemed on the verge of practical fruition, have often been reduced to nothingness, even at the most decisive moment, through some combination of untoward circumstances; yes, even the very memory of a pathway broken into the Land of Promise is often obliterated and what seemed accomplished fact has had to be recreated by laborious work covering years, decades and even centuries. Just the simplest, most natural and, in the end, almost self evident facts are the hardest to evolve and elucidate, just what was most decisive and potent of result has been time and again overlooked by the seeker after truth. ... The gold of historic thought, indeed, is as little to be found in the street as the gold of actual daily strife, and it is by no means the task of the historian of broad general scope to give the initial clew to its discovery. He, indeed, can only reproduce the past with fidelity and exactitude. The intuition of the true investigator and pathfinder of today and tomorrow must find its own way to new guiding principles from the work of yesterday, before yesterday, and the distant past."

"Von Soden observes that “since the discovery of the Indus civilization … it has been almost universally accepted that the Sumerians immigrated from the east.” The immigrants are regarded as having arrived in lower Mesopotamia either at the beginning of the Ubaid period (c. 5000 B.C.) or at the beginning of the Uruk period (perhaps c. 3500 B.C., but perhaps as late as 3250). In either case, the Sumerians seem to have fitted easily into an advanced Chalcolithic culture where writing was already in the early stages of development. Therefore, the implication is that they must have been from another advanced culture, and that points to the East. Bottero agrees that “the Sumerians must have arrived in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium, apparently from the southeast.” Von Soden further observes that “this immigration could have succeeded entirely by land if the Sumerians immigrated from somewhere in northern India,” and refers suggestively to “the westward migration of the Sumerian groups, whose language may have been related to the Dravidian languages of India.”"

"Since the discovery of the Indus civilization … it has been almost universally accepted that the Sumerians immigrated from the east.... this immigration could have succeeded entirely by land if the Sumerians immigrated from somewhere in northern India... the westward migration of the Sumerian groups, whose language may have been related to the Dravidian languages of India."

"From that moment, I did not cease to pray to God that by his grace it might one day be permitted to me to learn Greek."

"Minna showed me the greatest sympathy and entered into all my vast plans for the future. ... It was agreed between us that as soon as we were grown up we would marry, and then at once set to work to explore all the mysteries of Ankershagen; excavating ... the vast treasures hidden by Henning, then Henning’s sepulchre, and lastly Troy; nay we could imagine nothing pleasanter than to spend all our lives in digging for relics of the past."

"The Trojans were, therefore, an Aryan race, as is clear from the evidence of symbols engraved on terracotta discs. The nation which succeeded the Trojans was also long-lived as it occurs in every soil layer between a depth of 10 and 7 m. It was of Aryan origin for it featured numerous Aryan symbols; and I believe that I have demonstrated that several of these also belonged to our ancestors at a time when the Germans, Pelasgians, Hindus, Celts and Greeks all belonged to one nation and spoke a single language."

"The fascination emanating as usual from the historical material itself prevailed over any desire of practical or moral application and, needless to say, preceded any afterthought."

"It appears relevant to the general subject of this study, and also otherwise worth our while, to inspect more closely the varieties of royal duplications which Shakespeare has unfolded in the three bewildering central scenes of Richard II. The duplications, all one, and all simultaneously active, in Richard — "Thus play I in one person many people" (V. v.31) — are those potentially present in the King, the Fool, and the God. They dissolve, perforce, in the Mirror. Those three prototypes of "twin-birth" intersect and overlap and interfere with each other continuously."

"A hundred years or more of Christ-centered monastic piety have affected also the image of rulership. In fact, the unique Reichenau miniature is the most powerful pictorial display of what may be called "liturgical kingship" — a kingship centered in the God-man rather than in God the Father. As a result, the Reichenau artist ventured to transfer the Ottonian emperor also the God-man's "two natures in one person."

"In late antique art, we often find the halo bestowed on such figures as might impersonate a supra-individual idea or general notion. This special mark of distinction indicated that the figure was meant to represent in every respect a continuum, something permanent and sempiternal beyond the contingencies of time and corruption."

"Over against his lost outward kingship he sets an inner kingship, makes his true kingship to retire to inner man, to soul and mind and "regal thoughts": You may my glories and my state depose, But not my briefs, still am I king of those. (IV.i.192ff)"

"In other words, whenever we capitalize a notion and, in the English language, even change the gender from neuter to feminine, we actually are "haloing" the word or the notion and are indicating its sempiternity as an idea or power."

"That the phrase actually originated in the Hispana is obvious for a simple reason: only in that collection do we find a textual corruption of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon at which one of the bishops modestly said that God imperatorem erexit ad zelum [i.e. fidei]. In other words, a scribe copying the canons of Chalcedon misread the text and changed ad zelum into ad celum; and this erroneous reading must have reached, perhaps through the channels of Pseudo-Isidorus, the Norman Anonymous for whom even that great forgery in favor of the hierarchy could turn into grist brought to his royalist mill. This reading is merely an error, though an error remarkable by itself, since it shows how easily any extravagant exaltation of the imperial power could flow from the pen of a scribe in those centuries."

"The antithesis served the Anonymous, it is true, to observe very strictly the inherent difference between the God and the king; but it served him also to blur that line of distinction and to show where the difference between "God by nature" and "god by grace" ended; that is, in the case of potestas, of power. Essence and substance of power are claimed to be equal in both God and king, no matter whether that power be owned by nature or only acquired by grace."

"The jurists had claimed that the king's body politic is utterly void of "natural Defects and Imbecilities." Here, however, "Imbecility" seems to hold sway. And yet, the very bottom has not been reached. Each scene, progressively, designates a new low. "King body natural" in the first scene, and "Kingly Fool" in the second: with those two twin-born beings there is associated, in the half-sacramental abdication scene, the twin-born deity as an even lower estate. For the "Fool" marks the transition from "King" to "God," and nothing could be more miserable, it seems, than the God in the wretchedness of man."

"The features as reflected by the looking-glass betray that he is stripped of every possibility of a second or super-body — of the pompous body politic of king, of the God-likeness of the Lord's deputy elect, of the follies of the fool, and even of the most human griefs residing in inner man. The splintering mirror means, or is, the breaking part of any possible duality. All those facets are reduced to one: to the banal face and insignificant physis of a miserable man, a physis now void of any metaphysis whatsoever. It is both less and more than Death. It is the demise of Richard and the rise of a new body natural."

"It is unacceptable and incompatible with Christianity to think of the protection of life in ethnic terms."

"I don’t think about the fact that I have to complete a marathon a day. I run one kilometre at a time. If I can do one, I can do another. That way, it never seems overwhelming."

"The key is to break down the big goal into small ones. In my mind I don't cycle 18,000 km, I always cycle to the next gas station or restaurant and reward myself with some chocolate."

"When someone says to me, no one’s done that before, I say: great, then I can be the first."

"Pain is temporary, great memories last forever."

"I never panic. I focus. And I block things out. I tell myself: This is not doing me any good now, don't speed up, stay in rhythm. That's the shore over there, that's where we're going now, and that's all that matters now."

"The hardest thing is always getting to the starting line and having the courage to do it. Most adventures fail because they are never done."

"But the Stuttgart-born athlete achieved his masterpiece in 2020 and 2021: In the midst of the Corona pandemic, Deichmann swam, biked and ran alone around the world - and thus advanced to stardom."

"Just do it. That is, the hardest part is getting to the starting line. With adventures, you never know what's going to happen. But if you just stay in your comfort zone and don't change anything, then it's comfortable, but it's also boring. And that's why you just have to do it, take the first step."

"I venture to suggest that the inhabitants of this country would do well if they were to assume the ancient, honorable, and national name ofBharata, remembering that India has become famous as Bharatvarsa, the land of the Bharats."

"In point of fact the Zind is derived from the Sanskrit, and a passage in Manu (Chapter X, slokes 43-45) makes the Persians to have descended from the Hindus of the second or Warrior caste."

"If we compare the mythology of the Hindus with that of the Greeks, It wilI have nothing to apprehend on the score of intrinsic copiousness. In point of aesthetic value, it is sometimes sup en or, at others, inferior to Greek: while in luxuriance and splendor it has the decided advantage. Olympus, wIth alI its family of gods and goddesses, must yield in pomp and majesty to the palaces of Vishnu and Indra."

"It will scarcely be possible to deny the Mahabharata to be one of the richest compositions in Epic poetry that was ever produced." "The Hindu lyric surpassed that of the Greeks in admitting both the rhyme and blank verse.""