Of course God will forgive me; that's His job.
— Heinrich Heine
I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.
Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.
It is a common phenomenon that just the prettiest girls find it so difficult to get a man.
I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.
Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.
Atheism is the last word of theism.
When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction.
When words leave off, music begins.
God will forgive me. It's his job.
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.
It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of - another Jew?
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.
Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.
The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
Matrimony; the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.
Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.
Woman is at once apple and serpent.
God will forgive me; that's his business.
True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.
The Bible is the great family chronicle of the Jews.
Oh, what lies there are in kisses.
Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.
Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.
Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.
I do not know if she was virtuous, but she was ugly, and with a woman that is half the battle.
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
In these times we fight for ideas and newspapers are our fortress.
Ask me not what I have, but what I am.
Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.
He only profits from praise who values criticism.
Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.
Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one's nose.
There are more fools in the world than there are people.
You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
