Top 70 Michael Ende Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “But that is another story and shall be told another time.”

— Michael Ende

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

2. “Every real story is a never ending story.”

— Michael Ende

3. “Momo listened to everyone and everything – even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees – and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.”

— Michael Ende

4. “What I’ve started I must finish. I’ve gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.”

— Michael Ende

5. “There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

— Michael Ende

6. “Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.”

— Michael Ende

7. “Lots of things take time, and time was Momo’s only form of wealth.”

— Michael Ende

8. “You wish for something, you’ve wanted it for years, and you’re sure you want it, as long as you know you can’t have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.”

— Michael Ende

9. “When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”

— Michael Ende

10. “You don’t feel a thing. There’s just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won’t be anything left of us.”

— Michael Ende

11. “To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others.”

— Michael Ende

12. “Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”

— Michael Ende

13. “Wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.”

— Michael Ende

14. “There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved.”

— Michael Ende

15. “You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”

— Michael Ende

16. “Wer keine Vergangenheit mehr hat, der hat auch keine Zukunft.”

— Michael Ende

17. “Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

— Michael Ende

18. “Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.”

— Michael Ende

19. “You must live your story.”

— Michael Ende

20. “What he had hoped for was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.”

— Michael Ende

21. “Without a past you can’t have a future.”

— Michael Ende

22. “Beni sevmeyi unutma! Ben de seni seviyorum!”

— Michael Ende

23. “If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.”

— Michael Ende

24. “One day, you don’t feel like doing anything. Nothing interests you, everything bores you. Feel more and more empty inside, more and more dissatisfied with yourself and the world in general. Then even that feeling wears off, and you don’t feel anything anymore. You become completely indifferent to what goes on around you. You forget how to laugh and cry – you’re cold inside and incapable of loving anything or anyone. There’s no going back. The disease has a name. It’s called deadly tedium.”

— Michael Ende

25. “Strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.”

— Michael Ende

26. “Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.”

— Michael Ende

27. “Hay que contar siempre con lo peor, y luego hay que hacer contra ello todo lo que se pueda.”

— Michael Ende

28. “Once someone dreams a dream, it can’t just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can’t remember it, what becomes of it?”

— Michael Ende

29. “Ungeheuer sind nun einmal notwendig, damit ein Held ein Held sein kann.”

— Michael Ende

30. “He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: “Life is like that,” but he couldn’t agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.”

— Michael Ende

31. “With them the individual counted for nothing. No one was irreplaceable, because they drew no distinction between one man and another... In this community there was harmony, but no love.”

— Michael Ende

32. “He was handsome and strong, but somehow that wasn’t enough for him. He also felt the need to be tough and inured to hardship... But how was he to come by that quality in this luminous garden, where all manner of fruit was to be had for the picking?”

— Michael Ende

33. “Like all true transformations, it was as slow and gentle as the growth of a plant.”

— Michael Ende

34. “He rode by day and he rode by night, in the scorching sun and the pelting rain.”

— Michael Ende

35. “Just as the setting sun turned the clouds to liquid gold.”

— Michael Ende

36. “Only the right name gives beings and things their reality. A wrong name makes everything unreal. That’s what lies do.”

— Michael Ende

37. “Time is the very essence of life itself, and life exists in our hearts.”

— Michael Ende

38. “Maybe all the people who say ghosts don’t exist are just afraid to admit that they do.”

— Michael Ende

39. “But time is life, and life exists in our hearts, and the more of it that the people saved, the less they actually had.”

— Michael Ende

40. “A person’s reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.”

— Michael Ende

41. “Manche Dinge brauchen ihre Zeit – und Zeit war ja das Einzige, woran Momo reich war.”

— Michael Ende

42. “A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.”

— Michael Ende

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

43. “Even when I was caught in the web, I didn’t give up hope. And as you see, I was right.”

— Michael Ende

44. “There are many kinds of loneliness, but Momo experienced one that only very few people know of, and that even fewer have experienced to the extent that Momo did. She felt like she was imprisoned in a treasure trove filled with priceless riches that continued to grow in number, threatening to suffocate her.”

— Michael Ende

45. “Existe una cosa muy misteriosa, pero muy cotidiana. Todo el mundo participa de ella, todo el mundo la conoce, pero muy pocos se paran a pensar en ella. Casi todos se limitan a tomarla como viene, sin hacer preguntas. Esta cosa es el tiempo. Hay calendarios y relojes para medirlo, pero eso significa poco, porque todos sabemos que, a veces, una hora puede parecernos una eternidad, y otra, en cambio, pasa en un instante.”

— Michael Ende

46. “He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest – he had seen beautiful things and horrible things – but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”

— Michael Ende

47. “Oh, nothing can happen more than once, but all things must happen one day.”

— Michael Ende

48. “I wish everything would stay like this forever,’ he said. ‘The moment is forever,’ she replied.”

— Michael Ende

49. “They look like good, strong hands.”

— Michael Ende

50. “In the end, it was only a few months that passed this way, and yet it was the longest period of time that Momo had ever lived through. Time can’t simply be measured with a clock and a calendar, just as words alone can’t describe the kind of loneliness Momo knew in these months.”

— Michael Ende