Quotes by Heinrich Heine

One should forgive ones enemies, but not before they are hanged.

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

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

Where books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too.

He only profits from praise who values criticism.

He always maintained that we fear something because we recognize it as fearsome through rational inferences, and that only the reason had any power; the heart had none. While I ate well and drank well, he kept demonstrating to me the advantages of reason... In striving after the positive, the poor man had argued away all lifes splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave.

The real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad

I once saw many flowers blooming Upon my way, in indolence I scorned to pick them in my going And passed in proud indifference.Now, when my grave is dug, they taunt me; Now, when Im sick to death in pain, In mocking torment still they haunt me, Those fragrant blooms of my disdain.

When words leave off music begins.

God will forgive me. Thats his business.

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

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

We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults until we at last come to look upon them as virtues.

God will forgive me that is His business.

God will forgive me the foolish remarks I have made about Him just as I will forgive my opponents the foolish things they have written about me even though they are spiritually as inferior to me as I to thee O God!

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!

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

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

Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon between spirit and matter.

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