Top 180 Heinrich Heine Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Where words leave off, music begins.”

— Heinrich Heine

Featured in: Music Quotes, Aesthetic Quotes, Beautiful Quotes, Culture Quotes, Quotes About Songs

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

— Heinrich Heine

Featured in: Sad Quotes, Depression Quotes

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

— Heinrich Heine

4. “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.”

— Heinrich Heine

5. “Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

Featured in: Reading Quotes

7. “God will forgive me. It’s his job.”

— Heinrich Heine

8. “A brainiac notices everything, an ignoramus comments about everything.”

— Heinrich Heine

9. “Freedom is a new religion, the religion of our time.”

— Heinrich Heine

10. “Silence is the essential condition of happiness.”

— Heinrich Heine

11. “When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.”

— Heinrich Heine

12. “There are more fools in the world than there are people.”

— Heinrich Heine

13. “Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.”

— Heinrich Heine

14. “In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.”

— Heinrich Heine

15. “Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death.”

— Heinrich Heine

16. “You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.”

— Heinrich Heine

17. “The more i get to know people, the more i like dogs.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

19. “Newness hath an evanescent beauty.”

— Heinrich Heine

20. “A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.”

— Heinrich Heine

21. “The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love.”

— Heinrich Heine

22. “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.”

— Heinrich Heine

23. “Lo, sleep is good, better is death – in sooth The best of all were never to be born.”

— Heinrich Heine

24. “Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

26. “Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.”

— Heinrich Heine

27. “Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Oh, what lies there are in kisses!”

— Heinrich Heine

28. “You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.”

— Heinrich Heine

29. “Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions.”

— Heinrich Heine

30. “The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.”

— Heinrich Heine

31. “God will pardon: That’s His business.”

— Heinrich Heine

32. “Thought precedes action as lighting does thunder.”

— Heinrich Heine

33. “The sea appears all golden. Beneath the sun-lit sky.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

36. “The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on; The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun.”

— Heinrich Heine

37. “I do not murmur, even if my heart break.”

— Heinrich Heine

38. “Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

40. “God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.”

— Heinrich Heine

41. “It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people.”

— Heinrich Heine

42. “It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of – another Jew?”

— Heinrich Heine

43. “No author is a man of genius to his publisher.”

— Heinrich Heine

44. “Phychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

46. “My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

48. “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.”

— Heinrich Heine

49. “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.”

— Heinrich Heine

50. “Out of my great sorrows, I make little songs.”

— Heinrich Heine