Heinrich Heine Quotes

“All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it. ”

“Ask me not what I have, but what I am.”

“Atheism is the last word of theism.”

“Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.”

“Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death.”

“Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.”

“Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.”

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

“God will forgive me. It's his job.”

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

“He only profits from praise who values criticism.”

“Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.”

“I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.”

“I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.”

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

“I live, which is the main point.”

“I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.”

“I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.”

“If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.”

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”

“In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.”

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

“It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.”

“It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of – another Jew?”

“Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.”

“Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”

“Matrimony; the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.”

“Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies – but not before they have been hanged.”

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

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”