Novelists From Germany

"Lo, the dead shall rise to heaven! Brethren hail the blest decree; Every sin shall be forgiven, Hell forever cease to be!"

"Sense of wrongs forget to treasure— Brethren, live in perfect love! In the starry realms above, God will mete as we may measure."

"No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite."

"Joy from truth's own glass of fire Sweetly on the searcher smiles; Lest on virtue's steeps he tire, Joy the tedious path beguiles. High on faith's bright hill before us, See her banner proudly wave! Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,— Bursts the bondage of the grave!"

"To the Gods we ne'er can render Praise for every good they grant; Let us, with devotion tender, Minister to grief and want. Quenched be hate and wrath forever, Pardoned be our mortal foe— May our tears upbraid him never, No repentance bring him low!"

"We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?"

"Joy, in Nature's wide dominion, Mightiest cause of all is found; And 'tis joy that moves the pinion, When the wheel of time goes round"

"Be embraced, ye millions! This kiss is for the whole world! Brothers, above the arch of stars A loving Father surely dwells."

"Welcome, all ye myriad creatures! Brethren, take the kiss of love!"

"Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal, Daughter of Elysium! Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing Goddess, to thy shrine we come. Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are."

"Liebe ist nur dem bekannt, der hoffnungslos in der Liebe beharrt"

"KING PHILIPP II: Can you establish some new creed to justify my bloody murder of my only son? GRAND INQUISITOR: To appease eternal justice and redeem us, God's own Son was killed on the wooden cross. KING: And can you spread this creed throughout all Europe? GRAND INQUISITOR: Far and wide, everywhere people worship the cross."

"He, that noble prize possessing— He that boasts a friend that's true, He whom woman's love is blessing, Let him join the chorus too!"

"I am called The richest monarch in the Christian world; The sun in my dominion never sets."

"O the idea was childish, but divinely beautiful."

"Grosse Seelen dulden still."

"O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?"

"The voice of the majority is no proof of justice."

"Lebe mit deinem Jahrhundert, aber sei nicht sein Geschöpf; leiste deinen Zeitgenossen, aber was sie bedürfen, nicht was sie loben."

"Bow before Him, all creation! Mortals, own the God of love! Seek Him high the stars above,— Yonder is His habitation!"

"Have faith! where'er thy bark is driven,— 'The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth,— Know this! God rules the host of heaven, The inhabitants of earth."

"A moment lived in paradise Is not atoned for too dearly by death."

"Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last! Loitering slow, the Future creepeth — Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth — And motionless forever stands the Past."

"What are hopes, what are plans?"

"Don't let your heart depend on things That ornament life in a fleeting way! He who possesses, let him learn to lose, He who is fortunate, let him learn pain."

"Life is only error, And death is knowledge."

"Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield! Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason, Resplendent daughter of the head divine, Wise foundress of the system of the world, Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou, Bound to the tail of folly's uncurbed steed, Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd, Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss. Accursed, who striveth after noble ends, And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans! To the fool-king belongs the world."

"Pain is short, and joy is eternal."

"On the mountains there is freedom! The world is perfect everywhere, Save where man comes with his torment."

"Who dares impede my progress? Who presume The spirit to control which guideth me? Still must the arrow wing its destined flight! Where danger is, there must Johanna be; Nor now, nor here, am I foredoomed to fall; Our monarch's royal brow I first must see Invested with the round of sovereignty. No hostile power can rob me of my life, Till I've accomplished the commands of God."

"In Kant's troubled criticism, there is all the torment of Christianity; in his theory of radical evil, the dogma of original sin persists, however philosophically transfigured. Schiller rightly wrote to Goethe: “There is always something in Kant, as in Luther, that reminds us of the monk who, even after leaving the cloister, cannot erase its traces from himself.” (from “'Logos”', II issue, p. 113)"

"For Schiller, freedom means precisely the absence of constraint, not only physical but also moral; because even duty constrains us painfully when it conflicts with sensible impulse, as in Kantian rigorism. Aesthetic freedom for Schiller is something more than moral freedom: the latter would indeed be a liberation from sensible impulses, but it would place us under the rule of a law imposed on our human nature. Aesthetic freedom also frees us from the suffering of this constraint, making us feel that ethical law is in accordance with our natural inclination."

"I am better than my reputation."

"Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves it as a fly in a glue bottle. His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from Shakespeare's endless rhythms! … 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."

"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."

"His Armies, weakened by defeat and defeat, dispirited by misfortune, had unlearned - under beaten generals - that warlike impetuosity which as it is the consequence, so it is the guarentee of success."

"Was man nicht aufgibt, hat man nie verloren."

"Self Confidence has always been the parent of great actions."

"Man kann den Menschen nicht verwehren, Zu denken, was sie wollen."

"Friedrich Schiller, accepting Kant's legacy of the intelligible self and the sensible self, distinguishes two aspects that we can only divide abstractly in human beings and on which our analysis must stop: the person, who remains constant, and his or her changing states. (from “'Logos”', II fascicle p. 110)"

"Fortune, which had never forsaken him in his lifetime, favored the King of Sweden even in his death, with the rare privilege of falling in the fullness of his glory and an untarnished fame. By a timely death, his protecting genius rescued him from the inevitable fate of man - that of forgetting moderation in the intoxication of success, and justice in the plenitude of power."

"All men without distinction, are allured by immediate advantages. Great minds alone are excited by distant good. So long as wisdom in it's projects, calculates upon wisdom, or relies upon its own strength, it forms none by chimerical schemes - and runs the risk of making itself the laughter of the world. But it is certain of success, and can reckon upon aid and admiration, when it finds a place in it's plans for barbarism, rapacity and superstition and can render the selifsh passions of mankind the executor of its' purposes."

"It is an unfailing maxim, that if policy enjoins an act of violence, its execution must never be entrusted to the violent."

"Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation."

"Even the strongest minds cannot, with impunity, defy the prejudices of the age."

"O tender yearning, sweet hoping! The golden time of first love! The eye sees the open heaven, The heart is intoxicated with bliss; O that the beautiful time of young love Could remain green forever."

"In circumstances where the law of force prevails, where security depends on power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place itself in a posture of defense."

"Truth suffers no loss if a vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them."

"The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its Creator—permit me to use this human simile—the first duty of all thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one appearance in nature—the thinking being. The great compound called the world is only remarkable to me because it is present to shadow forth symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All in me and out of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to me. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds on to make itself understandable to intelligence—the alphabet by means of which all spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with one another. Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they transport me into the active state of their author, of their possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling Being, and let me perceive my relationship with that Being."

"Only through Beauty's morning gate, dost thou enter the land of Knowledge."