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You talk of our having an idea we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.

Heinrich Heine

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Heinrich Heine
Age: 58 †
Born: 1797
Born: December 13
Died: 1856
Died: February 17
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Publicist
Writer
Dusseldorf
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Harry Heine
Talk
Dies
Scourges
Fighting
Martyrs
Whether
Scourge
Idea
Martyr
Ideas
Arena
Writing
Drives
Fight

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The swan, like the soul of the poet, By the dull world is ill understood.
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Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Oh, what lies there are in kisses!
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Everywhere that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha.
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The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: It exists in spite of its ministers.
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I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.
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You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
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As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of their country, yea, of the whole earth. The hearts of great men are the stars of earth and doubtless when one looks down from above upon our planet, these hearts are seen to send forth, a silvery light just like the stars of heaven.
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Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.
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Be entirely tolerant or not at all follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.
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Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
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True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.
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Our sweetest hopes rise blooming. And then again are gone, They bloom and fade alternate, And so it goes rolling on. I know it, and it troubles My life, my love, my rest, My heart is wise and witty, And it bleeds within my breast.
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There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men.
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The violets prattle and titter, And gaze on the stars high above.
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We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.
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Religion cannot sink lower than when somehow it is raised to a state religion ... It becomes then an avowed mistress.
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But a day must come when the fire of youth will be quenched in my veins, when winter will dwell in my heart, when his snow flakes will whiten my locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper.
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In the image of the lion made He kittens small and curious.
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Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.
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