Heinrich Heine quotes:

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

God will forgive me. It's his job.

Of course God will forgive me; that's His job.

God will forgive me; that's his business.

Atheism is the last word of theism.

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

The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them, And with them merrily play.

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.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.

The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.

I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

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.

Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.

The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.

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.

I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.

Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.

Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.

I have smelt all the aromas there are in the fragrant kitchen they call Earth; and what we can enjoy in this life, I surely have enjoyed just like a lord!

The butterfly long loved the beautiful rose, And flirted around all day; While round him in turn with her golden caress, Soft fluttered the sun's warm ray.... I know not with whom the rose was in love, But I know that I loved them all. The butterfly, rose, and the sun's bright ray, The star and the bird's sweet call.

Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.

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

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

I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.

Each violet peeps from its dwelling to gaze at the bright stars above.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men.

Das war ein vorspeil nur; That was only a prelude; dort wo man Buecher verbrennt, Where one burns books, vebrennt man auch am Ende One will also burn people Menchen. Eventually.

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people.

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

I call'd 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 skill'd in debate, He talks quite glibly of church and state.

The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

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

No compass has ever been invented for the high seas of matrimony.

It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of - another Jew?

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.

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.

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.

The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love.

The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear.

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 splendour, And also her figure so slender...

At Dresden on the Elbe, that handsome city, Where straw hats, verses, and cigars are made, They've built (it well may make us feel afraid,) A music club and music warehouse pretty.

Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.

I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.

Good Luck is a giddy maid, Fickle and restless as a fawn; She smooths your hair; and then the jade Kisses you quickly, and is gone.

The spring's already at the gate With looks my care beguiling; The country round appeareth straight A flower-garden smiling.

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

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

The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.

The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night With comfort are downward gazing.

Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.

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.

Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.

Oh what lies there are in kisses! And their guile so well prepared! Sweet the snaring is; but this is Sweeter still, to be ensnared.

With the rose the butterfly's deep in love, A thousand times hovering round; But round himself, all tender like gold, The sun's sweet ray is hovering found.

The sun's sweet ray is hovering discovered.

A lonely fir-tree is standing On a northern barren height; It sleeps, and the ice and snow-drift Cast round it a garment of white.

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.

The lotus flower is troubled At the sun's resplendent light; With sunken head and sadly She dreamily waits for the night.

Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.

Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.

Newness hath an evanescent beauty.

With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe.

The nightingale appear'd the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.

Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.

God will pardon me. It is His trade.

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.

The eyes of spring, so azure, Are peeping from the ground; They are the darling violets, That I in nosegays bound.

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

I consider it a degradation and a stain on my honor to submit to baptism in order to qualify myself for state employment in Prussia.

The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel - and all of them are right.

Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet.

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

Iron helmets will not save/Even heroes from the grave/Good man's blood will drain away/While the wickid win the day.

First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how.

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

This was but a prelude; where books are burnt human-beings will be burnt in the end

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged

Where words leave off, music begins.

When words leave off, music begins.

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.

Woman is at once apple and serpent.

In blissful dream, in silent night, There came to me, with magic might, With magic might, my own sweet love, Into my little room above.

All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.

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.

Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.

The swan, like the soul of the poet, By the dull world is ill understood.

And over the pond are sailing Two swans all white as snow; Sweet voices mysteriously wailing Pierce through me as onward they go. They sail along, and a ringing Sweet melody rises on high; And when the swans begin singing, They presently must die.

Atheism is the last word of theism

In vain would I seek to discover Why sad and mournful am I, My thoughts without ceasing brood over A tale of the time gone by.

We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.

The violets prattle and titter, And gaze on the stars high above.

And the dancing has begun now, And the Dancings whirl round gaily In the waltz's giddy mazes, And the ground beneath them trembles.

Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.

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

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

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

A brainiac notices everything, an ignoramus comments about everything.

A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

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.

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.

All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.

And once again we plighted our troth, And titter'd, caress'd, kiss'd so dearly.

As the moon's fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion.

As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of their country, yea, of the whole earth. The hearts of great men are the stars of earth; and doubtless when one looks down from above upon our planet, these hearts are seen to send forth, a silvery light just like the stars of heaven.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.

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 snow flakes 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.

Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.

Don't send a poet to London.

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

Every age thinks its battle the most important of all.