Heinrich Heine Quotes

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.

The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.

In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.

Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.

He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave.

Jews who long have drifted from the faith of their fathers... are stirred in their inmost parts when the old, familiar Passover sounds chance to fall upon their ears.

She resembles the Venus de Milo: she is very old, has no teeth, and has white spots on her yellow skin.

Oh what lies there are in kisses! And their guile so well prepared! Sweet the snaring is; but this is Sweeter still, to be ensnared.

There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.

Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.

Sweet May lies fresh before us, To life the young flowers leap, And through the Heaven's blue o'er us The rosy cloudlets sweep.

Pretty women without religion are like flowers without perfume.

Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.

As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of their country, yea, of the whole earth. The hearts of great men are the stars of earth; and doubtless when one looks down from above upon our planet, these hearts are seen to send forth, a silvery light just like the stars of heaven.

From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom.

Atheism is the last word of theism

Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.

We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.

There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.

I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.

It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.

What lies lurk in kisses.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

First, I thought, almost despairing, This must crush my spirit now; Yet I bore it, and am bearing- Only do not ask me how.

Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too.

I consider it a degradation and a stain on my honor to submit to baptism in order to qualify myself for state employment in Prussia.

God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.

But oh! the Latin!-Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. Lucky dogs! they already knew in their cradles the nouns ending in im. I on the contrary had to learn it by heart, in the sweat of my brow.

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.

In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.

I live! Red life boils in my veins, earth yields beneath my feet, in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives.

The years keep coming and going, Men will arise & depart; Only one thing is immortal: The love that is in my heart.

All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.

Laughter is wholesome. God is not so dull as some people make out. Did not He make the kitten to chase its tail.

The sea appears all golden. Beneath the sun-lit sky.

Where words cease, there music begins.

All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.

The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.

You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.