One must have a tough mind, and a soft heart.
The sun still shines.
Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.
I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.
I can’t be overwhelmingly happy. I’m never free for a moment day and night from the uncertainty in which we live these days, which excludes any carefree plans for tomorrow and casts a shadow over all the days to come.
How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?
And I could weep at how mean people are and how they betray their fellow creatures, perhaps for the sake of personal advantage. It is enough to make a person lose heart sometimes. I often wish I lived on a Robinson Crusoe island.
I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it.
An end in terror is preferable to terror without end.
Who would have thought it possible that a tiny flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought...
It is such a splendid sunny day and I have to go.
Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible. But isn’t that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn’t every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I’ll be alive tomorrow morning? A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the arth and the stars.
It was a sunny day, I was carrying a child in a white dress to be christened. The path to the church led up a steep slope, but I held the child in my arms firmly and without faltering. Then suddenly my footing gave way... I had enough time to put the child down before plunging into the abyss. The child is our idea. In spite of all obstacles it will prevail.
I’ve just been playing the Trout Quintet on the phonograph. Listening to the andantino makes me want to be a trout myself. You can’t help rejoicing and laughing, however moved or sad you feel, when you see the springtime clouds in the sky, the budding branches, moved by the wind, in the bright early sunlight. I’m really looking forward to the spring again. In that piece of Schubert’s you can positively feel and smell the breeze and hear the birds and the whole of creation shouting for joy.
It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
I pity people who can’t find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It’s a matter of joy in life.
I would so much like to have something of you that I could always keep by me, that nobody else would notice.
Dear God, you created us in your likeness, our hearts are uneasy until they find you – From the film Sophie Scholl.
Theory is a lovely furrow with nothing but poppy plants; practice is a furrow with a few poppy plants hidden among lots of weeds.
Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided.
The blame did not lay on evil men, for evil men always do evil things. The blame lay on all of those millions who just wanted to survive.