Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us.
A heart that overflows may seek out merrymaking and boisterous festivities to quietly rejoice, unnoticed amidst the reveling crowds.
There is one privilege we’ll never lose; currently it’s called nationality. It means that everyone was born somewhere, which is infact self-evident.
Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else, compared to theory.
I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.
A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.
Freedom requires guns.
Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!
Prose talks and poetry sings.
Before passing different laws for different people, I’d relinquish myself unto you as your slave.
As youth lives in the future, so the adult lives in the past: No one rightly knows how to live in the present.
The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet’s task to turn it into an audience.
To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.
Gold schenkt die Eitelkeit, der rauhe Stolz, Die Freundschaft und die Liebe schenken Blumen. Gold is the gift of vanityand pride, Friendship and love offer flowers.
Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers – his hopes.
What raises great poetry above all else – it is the entire person and also the entire world.
The state has no religion for the simple reason that it has each and everyone.
Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army’s strength is the foot soldiers.
If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.