German Quotes

I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.

I have a clear conscience.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it.

It was my study of the two Corinthian letters that first caused me to concentrate my attention more directly on the relation of the apostle Paul to the older apostles.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness.

The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres.

His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service.

But in Christianity, by contrast, the freedom of the children of God was also freedom from all important worldly interests, from all art and science, etc.

Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.

I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns... your thought process goes on.

I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting.

We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.

The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?

The simpler it is, the more beautiful it will become.

My masters are strange folk with very little care for music in them.

Where there is devotional music, God is always at hand with His gracious presence.

I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.

Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.

I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour will stimulate a like humour in the listener.