Top 180 Heinrich Heine Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.”

— Heinrich Heine

152. “The violets prattle and titter, And gaze on the stars high above.”

— Heinrich Heine

153. “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!”

— Heinrich Heine

154. “Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too.”

— Heinrich Heine

155. “Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.”

— Heinrich Heine

156. “You should only attempt to borrow from those who have but few of this world’s goods, as their chests are not of iron, and they are, besides, anxious to appear wealthier than they really are.”

— Heinrich Heine

157. “If thou lookest on the lime-leaf, Thou a heart’s form will discover; Therefore are the lindens ever Chosen seats of each fond lover.”

— Heinrich Heine

158. “The gazelles so gentle and clever Skip lightly in frolicsome mood.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

160. “No compass has ever been invented for the high seas of matrimony.”

— Heinrich Heine

161. “The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”

— Heinrich Heine

162. “He is noble who both feels and acts nobly.”

— Heinrich Heine

163. “Every age thinks its battle the most important of all.”

— Heinrich Heine

164. “It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.”

— Heinrich Heine

165. “Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.”

— Heinrich Heine

166. “Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related.”

— Heinrich Heine

167. “Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature’s grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.”

— Heinrich Heine

168. “The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel – and all of them are right.”

— Heinrich Heine

169. “Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.”

— Heinrich Heine

170. “Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.”

— Heinrich Heine

171. “He who fears to venture as far as his heart urges and his reason permits, is a coward; he who ventures further than he intended to go, is a slave.”

— Heinrich Heine

172. “It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears, and each weeps really for himself.”

— Heinrich Heine

173. “In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.”

— Heinrich Heine

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

— Heinrich Heine

175. “There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.”

— Heinrich Heine

176. “In action, the English have the advantage enjoyed by free men always entitled to free discussion: of having a ready judgment on every question. We Germans, on the other hand, are always thinking. We think so much that we never form a judgment.”

— Heinrich Heine

177. “So long as my heart is full of love and the heads of my fellow-men are full of folly, I shall never lack something to write about.”

— Heinrich Heine

178. “Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.”

— Heinrich Heine

179. “Like a great poet, nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the utmost economy of means: nothing but sun, trees, flowers, water, and love. Of course, if the latter is absent from the beholder’s heart, the whole landscape will be an unpleasing sight; then the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, and the trees provide good firewood, and the flowers are classified according to the number of their stamens, and the water is wet.”

— Heinrich Heine

180. “For the Greeks, beauty is truth; for the Hebrews, truth is beauty.”

— Heinrich Heine

181. “The ancient, tremulous woman who was sitting behind the stove opposite the big cupboard may have sat there for a quarter of a century, and her thoughts and feelings are closely interwoven with every corner of the stove and every carving on the cupboard. And the stove and cupboard are alive, for part of a human soul has entered into them.”

— Heinrich Heine

182. “Terrible as is war, it yet displays the spiritual grandeur of man daring to defy his mightiest hereditary enemy – death.”

— Heinrich Heine

183. “Wherever a great soul utters its thoughts, there is Golgatha.”

— Heinrich Heine

184. “In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.”

— Heinrich Heine

185. “Seriousness shows itself more majestically when laughter leads the way.”

— Heinrich Heine

186. “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 life’s splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave.”

— Heinrich Heine

187. “Gott wird mir verzeihen, das ist sein Beruf.”

— Heinrich Heine