Quotes from Heinrich Heine

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

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.

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

I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.

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

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

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

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.

Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.

The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.

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

With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters, He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.