short-story-writers-from-germany

"All the peoples of Europe and, to begin with, those which were originally related and which gained supremacy at the cost of many wanderings and dangers, emigrated from Asia in the remote past. They were propelled from East to West by an irresistable instinct (unhemmbarer Trieb), the real cause of which is unknown to us.... The vocation and courage of those peoples, which were originally related and destined to rise to such heights, is shown by the fact that European history was almost entirely made by them."

"Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation – whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel – involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres."

"Eine Familie, die keine schwarzen Schafe hat, ist keine charakteristische Familie."

"Er meidet die überaus geschmackvollen offiziellen »Helden«friedhöfe. Warum nur, so denkt er, tun die Deutschen so viel für ihre Toten und so wenig für ihre Lebenden?"

"Sie muss also zu weit gehen, um herauszufinden, wie weit sie gehen darf."

"The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven."

"No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe."

"The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages."

"The last, best fruit that comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard; forbearance toward the unforbearing; warmth of heart toward the cold; and philanthropy toward the misanthropic."

"When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment — then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness."

"The virtues, like the body, become strong more by labor than by nourishment."

"The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven."

"Has it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the cages of birds when we wish to teach them to sing?"

"Suffering is my gain; I bow To my Heavenly Father's will, And receive it hushed and still; Suffering is my worship now."

"How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world!"

"Lift thyself up, look. around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earthworms, and earthly darkness."

"The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy."

"Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life."

"When Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction; unlike ordinary educators, who precisely reverse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands before us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, but not enter."

"The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's."

"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward."

"The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art."

"The romantics of the 19th century thought that the artist is at war with society, and must be destroyed by it eventually; this is the theme of all of Hoffmann's stories. I suggested -- in The Outsider and the subsequent five books of the 'cycle' -- that the fault lies partly with the artist, for preferring pessimism and self-pity to serious thought, and that the 'outsider' must eventually learn to accept his position as a spiritual leader of society. The church once provided the link between 'outsiders' and society, standing for the world of values, of 'meanings; beyond the present. The artists of the 19th century found themselves without this visible symbol of non-material values, and were, as Hoffmann says, frequently destroyed by society, or by their own destiny of standing outside it. I concluded that they must learn to stand alone, to be twice as strong, for half the problems of our civilization are due to 'the treason of the intellectual', their tendency to opt out and collapse in self-pity"