Heinrich Heine quotes - page 3

Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer, and literary critic, celebrated for his sharp wit and lyrical poetry. His works bridged Romanticism and early modernism, influencing European literature and thought. He remains recognized for his powerful social and political commentary as well as his enduring verses. Here are 107 of his quotes:

Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.

Heinrich Heine

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

Heinrich Heine

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

Heinrich Heine

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

Heinrich Heine

Woman is at once apple and serpent.

Heinrich Heine

God will pardon: That's His business.

Heinrich Heine

The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.

Heinrich Heine

Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.

Heinrich Heine

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.

Heinrich Heine

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

Heinrich Heine

Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.

Heinrich Heine

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

Heinrich Heine

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.

Heinrich Heine

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.

Heinrich Heine

No talent, but a character.

Heinrich Heine

A pine tree standeth lonely In the North on an upland bare; It standeth whitely shrouded With snow, and sleepeth there. It dreameth of a Palm tree Which far in the East alone, In the mournful silence standeth On its ridge of burning stone.

Heinrich Heine

The future smells of Russian leather, of blood, of godlessness and of much whipping. I advise our grandchildren to come into the world with very thick skin on their backs.

Heinrich Heine

My songs, they say, are poisoned. How else, love, could it be? Thou hast, with deadly magic, Poured poison into me.

Heinrich Heine

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals.

Heinrich Heine

Although the Protestant Church is accused of much disastrous bigotry, one claim to immortal fame must be granted it: by permitting freedom of inquiry in the Christian faith and by liberating the minds of men from the yoke of authority, it enabled freedom of inquiry in general to take root in Germany, and made it possible for science to develop independently. German philosophy, though it now puts itself on an equal basis with the Protestant Church or even above it, is nonetheless only its daughter; as such it always owes the mother a forbearing reverence.

Heinrich Heine

I am speaking of the religion whose earliest dogmas contain a condemnation of the flesh, and which not merely grants the spirit superiority over the flesh but also deliberately mortifies the flesh in order to glorify the spirit. I am speaking of the religion whose unnatural mission actually introduced sin and hypocrisy into the world, since just because of the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent pleasures of the senses became a sin and just because of the impossibility of our being wholly spirit hypocrisy inevitably developed.

Heinrich Heine

I had once a beautiful fatherland. The oak tree Grew so high there, violets nodded softly. It was a dream.It kissed me in German and spoke in German (You would hardly believe How good it sounded) the words: "I love you!" It was a dream.

Heinrich Heine