Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. These Heinrich Heine quotes will motivate you.
Best Heinrich Heine Quotes
- “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The more I get to know people, the more I like dogs.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“A brainiac notices everything, an ignoramus comments about everything.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “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.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “God will forgive me. It’s his job.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I live, which is the main point.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“Where words leave off, music begins.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Silence is the essential condition of happiness.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of – another Jew?” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “There are more fools in the world than there are people.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Ask me not what I have, but what I am.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistible force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The propaganda of communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are simply hunger, envy, death.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The years keep coming and going, Men will arise & depart; Only one thing is immortal: The love that is in my heart.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “But a day must come when the fire of youth will be quenched in my veins, when winter will dwell in my heart, when his snowflakes will whiten my locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “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.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman” ~ 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
- “Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling…” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Oh, what lies there are in kisses!” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.” ~ Heinrich Heine quotes
- “Matrimony; the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Thought precedes action as lighting does thunder.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Thought is invisible nature.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Woman is at once apple and serpent.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “The beauteous dragonfly’s dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body’s bright splendor, And also her figure so slender…” ~ Heinrich Heine
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“He only profits from praise who values criticism.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “On the waves of the brook she dances by, The light, the lovely dragonfly; She dances here, she dances there, The shimmering, glimmering flutterer fair. And many a foolish young beetle’s impressed By the blue gauze gown in which she is dressed; They admire the enamel that decks her bright, And her elegant waist so slim and slight.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.” ~ Heinrich Heine
- “I called the devil, and he came, And with wonder, his form did I closely scan; He is not ugly and is not lame, But really a handsome and charming man. A man in the prime of life is the devil, Obliging, a man of the world, and civil; A diplomatist too, well skilled in debate, He talks quite glibly of church and state.” ~ Heinrich Heine
