Quotes from Heinrich Heine

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

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.

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

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.

God will forgive me. It's his job." Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it.

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

The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.

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.

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.

Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.

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

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

He only profits from praise who values criticism.

Photography is a witness against the mistaken opinion that art is an imitation of nature.

With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters, He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.

Newness hath an evanescent beauty.

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.

The propaganda of communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are simply hunger, envy, death.

Atheism is the last word of theism.

God will forgive me. It's his job.

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

Lo, sleep is good, better is death--in sooth The best of all were never to be born.

Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people

The Romans would never have had time to conquer the world if they had been obliged to learn Latin first of all.