Top 35 E.t.a. Hoffmann Quotes
#1. He was, however, obliged to leave the university, because Nathaniel's story had created a sensation, and it was universally considered a quite unpardonable trick to smuggle a wooden doll into respectful tea parties in place of a living person.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#2. Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#3. It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#4. Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all that a writer can do is to present it as "in a glass, darkly".
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#5. She was not too tall, and of a voluptuous build, so that my eyes wandered amid many charms that hitherto had been strangers to them.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#6. Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won't help you.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#7. Poor, ill-advised Roderich! What evil power did you conjure up to poison in its first youth the race you thought to have planted for eternity?
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#8. It is true that writers often owe their most inspired thoughts, their most extraordinary phrases, to their generous typesetters, who assist their flights of fancy with so-called typographical errors.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#9. It was obvious from their expressions that they believed the wellbeing of R.'s inhabitants was endangered by my youth. The visit was very enjoyable, but the horror of the previous night still clung to me.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#10. So true it is, that even the shortest step out of the immediate circle of one's best friends, is equal, in effect, to the remotest separation.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#11. The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our bosoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches!
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#12. Know, then," said he, "that I myself am the destiny - the demon, as thou sayest, by whom I am persecuted and destroyed, that my conscience is loaded with guilt, nay, with the stain of a shameful, infamous, and mortal crime,
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#13. The unknown characters of writing seem to be endowed with an evil of life of their own as though sentient, and fain would wrest themselves forth from the parchment and wreak mischief on whomsoever gazes upon them.
E. Hoffmann Price
#14. It may be, after all," said the Student Anselmus to himself, "that the superfine stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely in Monsieur Conradi's, might really be the cause of all these shocking phantasms, which tortured me so at Archivarius Lindhorst's door.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#15. Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#16. There are dread secrets that none may know and have peace. More, secrets that render whosoever knoweth them an alien unto the tribe he belongs to, that cause him to walk alone on earth, for he who takes, pays.
E. Hoffmann Price
#17. [E]ven in gay, easygoing, and carefree minds there may exist a presentiment of dark powers within ourselves which are bent upon our own destruction.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#18. Misty dreamers had not a chance with her; since, though she did not talk - talking would have been altogether repugnant to her silent nature.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#19. How prone poor Humanity is to dam up the minutest remnants of its freedom, and build an artificial roof to prevent it looking up to the clear blue sky.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#20. Every year lays more earth upon us, which weighs us down from aerial regions, till we go under the earth at last.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#21. Oh, where have you gone, you blissful dreams of future happiness
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#22. I wished I could read in their shrivelled faces and watery eyes, I wished I could hear in the bad French which came half through their pinched lips and half through their pointed noses, how the old ladies had got at least on to good terms with the uncanny beings which haunted the castle.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#23. There are men from whom nature or some peculiar destiny has removed the cover beneath which we hide our own madness. They are likethin-skinned insects whose visible play of muscles seem to make them deformed, though in fact, everything soon turns to its normal shape again.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#24. None but a poet can understand a poet; none but a romantic spirit transported with poetry and consecrated in the Holy of Holies an comprehend what the ordained utters out of his inspiration.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#25. Think of the wonderful circles in which our whole being moves and from which we cannot escape no matter how we try. The circler circles in these circles.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#26. Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#27. As the priest is characterized by his cassock, so the smoker by his pipe. The way in which he holds it, raises it to his lips, and knocks out the ashes, reveals his personality, habits, passions, and even his thoughts.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#28. Human beings ought not to draw in their antennae at every ungentle touch, like supersensitive insects.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#29. It is only in the morning that one should marry, read unfavourable reviews, make one's will, beat one's servants, and so forth.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#30. There is nothing more marvelous or madder than real life.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#31. It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#32. Mozart's music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#33. I may be permitted, kind reader, to doubt whether you have ever been enclosed in a glass bottle, unless some vivid dream has teased you with such magical mishaps.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#34. Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?
E.T.A. Hoffmann
#35. Bulgakov always loved clowning and agreed with E. T. A. Hoffmann that irony and buffoonery are expressions of 'the deepest contemplation of life in all its conditionality
Mikhail Bulgakov
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