“When words leave off, music begins.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 343
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Heinrich Heine:
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Famous Heinrich Heine Quotes
“Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.”
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods, p. 493
Lutetia; or, Paris. From the Augsberg Gazette, 12, VII (1842)
Heinrich Heine Quotes about the world
As quoted in The Medical Record No. 674 (6 October 1883); also in And I Quote : The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaker (1992) by Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans and Andrew Frothingham, p. 447
“There are more fools in the world than there are people.”
As quoted in One Big Fib : The Incredible Story of the Fraudulent First International Bank of Grenada (2003) by Owen Platt, p. 37
As quoted in The Pillars of Economic Understanding : Factors and Markets (2000) by Mark Perlman and Charles Robert McCann
Ich spreche von jener Religion, in deren ersten Dogmen eine Verdammnis alles Fleisches enthalten ist, und die dem Geiste nicht bloß eine Obermacht über das Fleisch zugesteht, sondern auch dieses abtöten will, um den Geist zu verherrlichen; ich spreche von jener Religion, durch deren unnatürliche Aufgabe ganz eigentlich die Sünde und die Hypokrisie in die Welt gekommen, indem eben durch die Verdammnis des Fleisches die unschuldigsten Sinnenfreuden eine Sünde geworden und durch die Unmöglichkeit, ganz Geist zu sein, die Hypokrisie sich ausbilden mußte.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 3
"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)
Heinrich Heine Quotes about God
Death-bed joke (1856), attributed as last words; quoted in French in The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by Joyce Crick (2003).
Quoted as “Gott wird mir verzeihen, das ist sein Beruf.” in Letzte Worte auf dem Totenbett. Quelle: Alfred Meißner: "Heinrich Heine. Erinnerungen" (1856), Kapitel 5
Variant translation: Why, of course, he will forgive me; that's his business.
As quoted in Heinrich Heine (1937) by Louis Untermeyer
"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)
Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26
Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up. p. 25
Context: I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it; and men must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks' cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consoling Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of heaven.
The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.
Heinrich Heine: Trending quotes
“I owe my conversion simply to the reading of a book.”
Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 14-15
Context: In my latest book, "Komancero," I have explained the transformation that took place within me regarding sacred things. Since its publication many inquiries have been made, with zealous importunity, as to the manner in which the true light dawned upon me. Pious souls, thirsting after a miracle, have desired to know whether, like Saul on the way to Damascus, I had seen a light from heaven; or whether, like Balaam, the son of Beor, I was riding on a restive ass, that suddenly opened its mouth and began to speak as a man? No; ye credulous believers, I never journeyed to Damascus, nor do I know anything about it, save that lately the Jews there were accused of devouring aged monks of St. Francis; and I might never have known even the name of the city had I not read the Song of Solomon, wherein the wise king compares the nose of his beloved to a tower that looketh towards Damascus. Nor have I ever seen an ass, at least any four-footed one, that spake as a man, though I have often enough met men who, whenever they opened their mouths, spake as asses.
In truth, it was neither a vision, nor a seraphic revelation, nor a voice from heaven, nor any strange dream or other mystery that brought me into the way of salvation; and I owe my conversion simply to the reading of a book. A book? Yes, and it is an old, homely-looking book, modest as nature and natural as it; a book that has a work-a-day and unassuming look, like the sun that warms us, like the bread that nourishes us; a book that seems to us as familiar and as full of kindly blessing as the old grandmother who reads daily in it with dear, trembling lips, and with spectacles on her nose. And this book is called quite shortly the Book, the Bible. Rightly do men also call it the Holy Scripture; for he that has lost his God can find Him again in this Book, and towards him that has never known God it sends forth the breath of the Divine Word. The Jews, who appreciate the value of precious things, knew right well what they did when, at the burning of the second temple, they left to their fate the gold and silver implements of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps, even the breastplate of the High Priest adorned with great jewels, but saved the Bible. This was the real treasure of the Temple, and, thanks be to God!
“Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.”
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 60
Heinrich Heine Quotes
Du bist wie eine Blume,
So hold und schön und rein;
Ich schau dich an, und Wehmut
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.
Du Bist Wie eine Blume, st. 1
Lyrical Intermezzo, 57; in Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-five Poems (1917) Selected and translated by Louis Untermeyer, p. 73
Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up. p. 25
Context: I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices and the laughing-stocks of their menials. Yet, though all this be the case, it will be the duty even of those who regard Christianity as an error still to uphold it; and men must journey barefoot through Europe, wearing monks' cowls, preaching the doctrine of renunciation and the vanity of all earthly possessions, holding up before the gaze of a scourged and despised humanity the consoling Cross, and promising, after death, all the glories of heaven.
The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity during eighteen centuries; it has been providential, divine, holy. All that it has done in the interest of civilisation, curbing the strong and strengthening the weak, binding together the nations through a common sympathy and a common tongue, and all else that its apologists have urged in its praise all this is as nothing compared with that great consolation it has bestowed on man. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity. The poet especially must acknowledge with reverence the terrible sublimity of this symbol.
The Home-coming, Poem 74; also in Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-five Poems (1917) Selected and translated by Louis Untermeyer, p. 134
“Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.”
Of Savoye, appointed ambassador to Frankfurt by Lamartine (1848); as quoted in Insults : A Practical Anthology of Scathing Remarks and Acid Portraits (1941) by Max John Herzberg, p. 74
“Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people”
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823), as translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
Variant translations:
Wherever books are burned, men in the end will also burn.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
Where they burn books, they will also burn people.
It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.
Where they burn books, they also burn people.
Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men.
Variant: Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
“One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.”
Statement of 1848, as quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) by Jonathon Green, p. 91
One must forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
As quoted in A Mania for Sentences (1985) by Dennis Joseph Enright, p. 10
Variant: We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged
History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. III (1834)
Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Lorelei, st. 1
“Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.”
History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Vol. I (1834)
Lutetia; or, Paris. From the Augsberg Gazette, 12, VII (1842)
“The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.”
As quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) by Jonathon Green
Variant translation: The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 281
Französische Bühne (The French Stage), ch. 9 (1837)
Original: (de) Die Menschen in jener alten Zeit hatten Überzeugungen, wir Neueren haben nur Meinungen, und es gehört etwas mehr als eine bloße Meinung dazu, um so einen gotischen Dom aufzurichten.
“True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.”
François de La Rochefoucauld
Misattributed
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 6
“Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.”
James Harrington in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)
Misattributed
“Out of my own great woe
I make my little songs.”
Aus Meinen Grossen Schmerzen (Out of My Great Woe), st. 1
Wartet nur! [Only Wait!] in Poems for the Times ; also in Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-five Poems (1917) Selected and translated by Louis Untermeyer, p. 263
French Affairs page 156
The Romantic School (1836)
Wenn man auch der protestantischen Kirche manche fatale Engsinnigkeit vorwirft, so muß man doch zu ihrem unsterblichen Ruhme bekennen: indem durch sie die freie Forschung in der christlichen Religion erlaubt und die Geister vom Joche der Autorität befreit wurden, hat die freie Forschung überhaupt in Deutschland Wurzel schlagen und die Wissenschaft sich selbständig entwickeln können. Die deutsche Philosophie, obgleich sie sich jetzt neben die protestantische Kirche stellt, ja sich über sie heben will, ist doch immer nur ihre Tochter; als solche ist sie immer in betreff der Mutter zu einer schonenden Pietät verpflichtet.
Source: The Romantic School (1836), p. 24
“If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.”
Letter to Julius Campe (March 18, 1840)
“Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle.”
Letters on the French Stage (1837)
<p>Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum.</p><p>Das küßte mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch
(Man glaubt es kaum
Wie gut es klang) das Wort: "Ich liebe dich!"
Es war ein Traum.</p>
In Der Fremde (In a Foreign Land)
Wartet nur! [Only Wait!] in Poems for the Times ; also in Poems of Heinrich Heine: Three Hundred and Twenty-five Poems (1917) Selected and translated by Louis Untermeyer, p. 262
Testamentary Will of Heinrich Heine (1856); no published source for this has been located.
Disputed
Heinrich Heine's Pictures of Travel (1855) as translated by Charles Godfrey Leland, p. 270
English Fragments (1828), Ch. 11 : The Emancipation
Variant: 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.
“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823), as translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
Variant translations:
Wherever books are burned, men in the end will also burn.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
Where they burn books, they will also burn people.
It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.
Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.
Where they burn books, they also burn people.
Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men.
