Top 180 Heinrich Heine Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “Reform Judaism is like mock turtle soup-turtle soup without the turtle.”

— Heinrich Heine

102. “And over the pond are sailing Two swans all white as snow; Sweet voices mysteriously wailing Pierce through me as onward they go. They sail along, and a ringing Sweet melody rises on high; And when the swans begin singing, They presently must die.”

— Heinrich Heine

103. “In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.”

— Heinrich Heine

104. “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.”

— Heinrich Heine

105. “Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.”

— Heinrich Heine

106. “There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.”

— Heinrich Heine

107. “Matrimony; the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.”

— Heinrich Heine

108. “The nightingale appear’d the first, And as her melody she sang, The apple into blossom burst, To life the grass and violets sprang.”

— Heinrich Heine

109. “Genius: 1. to believe your own thought. To believe that what is true for you is ultimately true. 2. a sledgehammer. 3. the fruit of labour and thought. 4. soul. 5. the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. 6. something one can become.”

— Heinrich Heine

110. “As the moon’s fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion.”

— Heinrich Heine

111. “And once again we plighted our troth, And titter’d, caress’d, kiss’d so dearly.”

— Heinrich Heine

112. “Oh, what lies there are in kisses.”

— Heinrich Heine

113. “Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman.”

— Heinrich Heine

114. “Glow-worms on the ground are moving, As if in the torch-dance circling.”

— Heinrich Heine

115. “One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies – but not before they have been hanged.”

— Heinrich Heine

116. “The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.”

— Heinrich Heine

117. “The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.”

— Heinrich Heine

118. “The cloudlets are lazily sailing O’er the blue Atlantic sea; And mid the twilight there hovers A shadowy figure o’er me...”

— Heinrich Heine

119. “It is an ancient story Yet is it ever new.”

— Heinrich Heine

120. “If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.”

— Heinrich Heine

121. “Oh fair, oh sweet and holy as dew at morning tide, I gaze on thee, and yearnings, sad in my bosom hide.”

— Heinrich Heine

122. “All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.”

— Heinrich Heine

123. “The beauteous eyes of the spring’s fair night With comfort are downward gazing.”

— Heinrich Heine

124. “Atheism is the last word of theism.”

— Heinrich Heine

125. “Twelve Dancings are dancing, and taking no rest, And closely their hands together are press’d; And soon as a dance has come to a close, Another begins, and each merrily goes.”

— Heinrich Heine

126. “Don’t send a poet to London.”

— Heinrich Heine

127. “In the image of the lion made He kittens small and curious.”

— Heinrich Heine

128. “Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.”

— Heinrich Heine

129. “Sweet May lies fresh before us, To life the young flowers leap, And through the Heaven’s blue o’er us The rosy cloudlets sweep.”

— Heinrich Heine

130. “The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.”

— Heinrich Heine

131. “Onde se queimam livros, acaba-se queimando pessoas.”

— Heinrich Heine

132. “The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them, And with them merrily play.”

— Heinrich Heine

133. “And the dancing has begun now, And the Dancings whirl round gaily In the waltz’s giddy mazes, And the ground beneath them trembles.”

— Heinrich Heine

134. “Graves they say are warm’d by glory; Foolish words and empty story.”

— Heinrich Heine

135. “There is no Sixth Commandment in art. The poet is entitled to lay his hands on whatever material he finds necessary for his work.”

— Heinrich Heine

136. “The sun’s sweet ray is hovering discovered.”

— Heinrich Heine

137. “Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.”

— Heinrich Heine

138. “Man, – the aristocrat amongst the animals.”

— Heinrich Heine

139. “Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.”

— Heinrich Heine

140. “From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom.”

— Heinrich Heine

141. “Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.”

— Heinrich Heine

142. “Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.”

— Heinrich Heine

143. “I consider it a degradation and a stain on my honor to submit to baptism in order to qualify myself for state employment in Prussia.”

— Heinrich Heine

144. “He that marries is like the dogs who was married to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is in that which he marries; mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap monsters and tempests, await him.”

— Heinrich Heine

145. “The night comes stealing o’er me, And clouds are on the sea; While the wavelets rustle before me With a mystical melody.”

— Heinrich Heine

146. “The negro king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the poor African; for every man is but another negro king, and would like to appear in a color different from that with which Fate has bedaubed him.”

— Heinrich Heine

147. “All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.”

— Heinrich Heine

148. “It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.”

— Heinrich Heine

149. “Every woman is the gift of a world to me.”

— Heinrich Heine

150. “Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.”

— Heinrich Heine