It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Girls
It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Vanity
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Flowers
The spring’s already at the gate With looks my care beguiling; The country round appeareth straight A flower-garden smiling.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Spring
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Genius
Whether a revolutions succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Revolution, Revolutionaries, Revolutions
He that marries is like the Doge who was wedded to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries: mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests await him.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Marriage
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand.—Its elements are hunger, envy, and death.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Communism
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Evil
Matrimony is the high sea for which no compass has yet to be invented.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Marriage
The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel—and all of them are right.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Quarrels, Fighting, Fight
The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Soldiers
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Sleep
There are more fools in the world than there are people.
—Heinrich Heine
God will forgive me. It’s his job.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Sin
The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it … did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.
—Heinrich Heine
Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Tolerance
Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tiger’s claws.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Humility
Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Literature
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.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Simplicity
God will forgive me, that’s his business.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Forgiveness
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin they would never have found time to conquer the world.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Language
He only profits from praise who values criticism.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Criticism
Oh what lies lurk in kisses!
—Heinrich Heine
Mark this well, ye proud men of action! ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Action, Thought
The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
The lotus flower is troubled
At the sun’s resplendent light;
With sunken head and sadly
She dreamily waits for the night.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Flowers
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Censorship, Book
In these days we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Ideas, News
A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.
—Heinrich Heine
Topics: Britain
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Berthold Auerbach German Novelist
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German Poet
- Friedrich Schiller German Poet
- Johann Gottfried Herder German Critic, Poet
- Konrad Adenauer German Statesman
- Novalis German Romantic Poet
- Friedrich Nietzsche German Philosopher, Scholar
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi German Philosopher
- Wilhelm von Humboldt German Statesman, Scholar
- Erwin Rommel German Field Marshal
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