13 Heinrich Heine Quotes on Psychology

Heinrich Heine quotes on psychology

4. At first I was almost about to despair, I thought I never could bear it - but I did I bear it. The question remains: how?

8. He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind. But a great man will never so far contradict his own feelings as to see, or, it may be, increase, with cold-blooded indifference, the misfortunes of his fellow country-men.

10. 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.

12. If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.

13. Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.

14. The future smells of Russian leather, of blood, of godlessness and of much whipping. I advise our grandchildren to come into the world with very thick skin on their backs.

16. Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.

20. Bien sur, il me pardonnera; c'est son metier. [Of course he will forgive me; that's his job.]

22. Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

32. There are more fools in the world than there are people.

33. I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

36. Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.

39. Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself.