Quotes from Lion Feuchtwanger

Glauben Sie ernstlich'[...]'daß wir dieses Volk nicht wieder werden zu Menschen machen können?

Had I not been thinking always of the ludicrous aspects of my own plight, or of the plight of others, I could not have survived that depressing, degrading experience without spiritual harm.

It was not living, it was vegetation. We longed for death.

my delight in philology, my insistence on having language clear-cut and exact, impels me, when someone says it is cold and someone else that it is warm, to look at the thermometer and say: "Gentlemen, it is 69 degrees Fahrenheit in this room.

But one should not trust first impulses. Instinct is not always a safe counsellor by any means.

However small we made ourselves, we took space and air from our neighbours. We were a torment to one another.

There were of course exceptions, but on the whole the "intellectuals" among us withstood the hardships of the journey resignedly and patiently. They proved to be tougher, quieter, more uncomplaining than many men from other walks of life who were physically stronger and physically better trained.

Speran?a este un sfetnic prost.

It has always been a blessed experience with me after an illness to feel that I was recovering.

I am a slow worker, but I could have written at least two books more in the time that I have been obliged to spend waiting around public offices and in the back yards of recruiting stations—waiting unnecessarily for unnecessary things.

I have sincerely tried not to deride the action of men, not to lament nor to abhor them. I have done all in my might to understand them.- Spinoza

Er) hat in unbegreiflicher Verblendung übersehen, daß ein Mensch auch ohne selbstständige Ideen und ohne Persönlichkeit in dem Augenblick Wesen und Inhalt annimt, in dem man Macht auf ihn überträgt.

Und voll grimmigen Triumphes, laut, rein und schön, in die Nacht hinein sprach er: "Thanatos, Thanatos.

We had all thought things would be quite different when we first came to France. The words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, were painted in giant letters over the door of the building we were in.

If they took Paris, what would become of us? It was ghastly to sit there in camp, helpless, imprisoned, unable to take any step against the disaster that was drawing nearer or even to get any definite information about it.

Optimists were optimistic, pessimists pessimistic, and the in-betweens listened to the optimists one day and to the pessimists the next.

To listen to his subtle comments on events of the present was like listening to a gentleman from the Biedermeier period expressing opinions about a modern airplane factory.

For a large part of what I know about people and things I have to thank an art of listening which wise teachers taught me early.

There were many painters there, painters of every sort and of every degree of eminence—Max Ernst, for instance, one of the founders of surrealism

Whether we liked it or not we were involuntary witnesses to every man's behaviour, to the way he walked, the way he ate, the way he slept, the way he washed, the way he put on his clothes. No one could hide anything from anybody.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.