Heinrich Heine citations
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Christian Johann Heinrich Heine [ˈkʁɪsti̯an ˈjoːhan ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈhaɪnə], né le 13 décembre 1797 à Düsseldorf, Duché de Berg, sous le nom de Harry Heine et mort le 17 février 1856 à Paris sous le nom de Henri Heine, fut l'un des plus grands écrivains allemands du XIXe siècle.

Heine est considéré comme le « dernier poète du romantisme » et, tout à la fois, comme celui qui en vint à bout. Il éleva le langage courant au rang de langage poétique, la rubrique culturelle et le récit de voyage au rang de genre artistique et conféra à la littérature allemande une élégante légèreté jusqu'alors inconnue. Peu d'œuvres de poètes de langue allemande ont été aussi souvent traduites et mises en musique que les siennes. Journaliste critique et politiquement engagé, essayiste, satiriste et polémiste, Heine fut aussi admiré que redouté. Ses origines juives ainsi que ses choix politiques lui valurent hostilité et ostracisme. Ce rôle de marginal marqua sa vie, ses écrits et l'histoire mouvementée de la réception de son œuvre. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. décembre 1797 – 17. février 1856
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Heinrich Heine citations célèbres

“Dieu me pardonnera, c'est son métier!”

Sur son lit de mort

“Ce n’était qu’un début. Là où on brûle des livres, on finit par brûler des hommes.”

Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher
Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
de
Almansor, 1823

Heinrich Heine: Citations en anglais

“I cannot explain the sadness
That's fallen on my breast.
An old, old fable haunts me,
And will not let me rest.”

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)

“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

“People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”

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.

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

As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 6

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

“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

“Don't send a poet to London.”

English Fragments (1828), Ch. 2 : London

“Oaks shall be rent; the Word shall shatter —
Yea, on that fiery day, the Crown,
Even the palace walls shall totter,
And domes and spires come crashing down.”

Heinrich Heine Wartet nur

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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 fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.”

As quoted in The Pillars of Economic Understanding : Factors and Markets (2000) by Mark Perlman and Charles Robert McCann

“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.”

<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)

“What! Think you that my flashes show me
Only in lightnings to excel?
Believe me, friends, you do not know me,
For I can thunder quite as well.”

Heinrich Heine Wartet nur

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

“Money bequeathed to my wife "on the express condition that she remarry. I want at least one person to be truly bereaved by my death."”

Testamentary Will of Heinrich Heine (1856); no published source for this has been located.
Disputed

“Rossini, divine master.”

Heinrich Heine's Pictures of Travel (1855) as translated by Charles Godfrey Leland, p. 270

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