Quotes from E. T. A. Hoffmann

It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.

How prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky.

Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.

Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won't help you.

There is nothing more marvelous or madder than real life.

It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.

Mozart's music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life.

Think of the wonderful circles in which our whole being moves and from which we cannot escape no matter how we try. The circler circles in these circles.

Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?

Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.

Every year lays more earth upon us, which weighs us down from aerial regions, till we go under the earth at last.