Friedrich Holderlin Quotes & Sayings

To the Parcae
A single summer grant me, great powers, and
a single autumn for fully ripened song
that, sated with the sweetness of my
playing, my heart may more willingly die.
The soul that, living, did not attain its divine
right cannot repose in the nether world.
But once what I am bent on, what is
holy, my poetry, is accomplished:
Be welcome then, stillness of the shadows' world!
I shall be satisfied though my lyre will not
accompany me down there. Once I
lived like the gods, and more is not needed. — Friedrich Holderlin

For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine. — Friedrich Holderlin

All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked,
And they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this:
That everything curls inward, like snakes,
Prophetic, dreaming on
The hills of heaven. And many things
Have to stay on the shoulders like a load
of failure. However the roads
Are bad. For the chained elements,
Like horses, are going off to the side,
And the old
Laws of the earth. And a longing
For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however
Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential.
Forwards, however, or backwards we will
Not look. Let us learn to live swaying
As in a rocking boat on the sea. — Friedrich Holderlin

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived
But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together. — Friedrich Holderlin

I am mortal, born to love and to suffer. — Friedrich Holderlin

Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the maniaWhich insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way. — Friedrich Holderlin

What has always made a Hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his Heaven. — Friedrich Holderlin

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven. — Friedrich Holderlin

Too long now things divine have been cheaply used
And all the power of heaven, the kindly, spent
In trifling waste by cold and cunning
Men without thanks, who when he, the Highest,
In person tills their field for them, think they know
the daylight and the Thunderer, and indeed
Their telescope may find them all, may
Count and may name every star of heaven.
Yet will the Father cover with holy night,
That we may last on earth, our too knowing eyes.
... Never will our
Free-ranging power coerce his heaven.
From "The Poet's Vocation" ("Dichterberuf") — Friedrich Holderlin

But where the danger is, also grows the saving power. — Friedrich Holderlin

For the mindful god does detest untimely growth. — Friedrich Holderlin

Close and difficult to realize is the god, but where danger abounds, grows what saves. — Friedrich Holderlin

What love and spirit give cannot be extorted. The state has always been made a hell by man's wanting to make it his heaven. The state is nothing but the coarse husk around the seed of life, the wall around the human fruits and flowers. Yet what good is a wall when the soil of our garden is parched? ... O inspiration, you will bring us the springtime of peoples again. The state cannot command your presence, but if it does not obstruct you, you will come. — Friedrich Holderlin

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. — Friedrich Holderlin

You have a head and a heart? Reveal only one of them, I say; If you reveal both at once, doubly they'll damn you, for both. — Friedrich Holderlin

Thus the sons of earth now drink in
The fire of heaven without danger.
And it is our duty, poets, to stand
Bare-headed under the storms of God,
Grasping with our own hand
The Father's beam itself,
And to offer the gift of heaven,
Wrapped in song, to the people.
From "As On a Holiday" ("Wie Wenn am Feiertage") — Friedrich Holderlin

But the sower Loves to see a woman Fallen asleep in the daytime Over a half-knitted stocking. — Friedrich Holderlin

In life learn art, in the artwork learn life. If you see the one correctly you see the other also. — Friedrich Holderlin

Everything that I have known
You'll write to me to remind
Me of, and likewise I shall do
The whole past I'll recount to you — Friedrich Holderlin

Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen ist alles. (We are nothing; what we search for is everything.) — Friedrich Holderlin

I was raised by the song Of the murmuring grove And loving I learned Among Flowers. — Friedrich Holderlin

Then and Now In younger days each morning I rose with joy, To weep at nightfall; now, in my later years, Though doubting I begin my day, yet Always its end is serene and holy. — Friedrich Holderlin

Eagles live in the darkness,
And the sons of the Alps
Cross over the abyss without fear
On lightly-built bridges.
***
Growing weak on the separate mountains
Then give us calm waters;
Give us wings, and loyal minds
To cross over and return. — Friedrich Holderlin

I can think of no people more fragmented ... Craftsmen you see, but no humans, thinkers, but no humans, priests, but no humans, lords and servants, boys and established peoples but no humans
is this not like a battlefield, where hands and arms and all limbs lie chaotically in pieces, while the spilled blood of life runs into the sand? — Friedrich Holderlin

Why do you like me more when I was prouder and wilder, more full of words, yet emptier? — Friedrich Holderlin

Isn't everything alive already in your blood? — Friedrich Holderlin

I grew up in the arms of the gods. — Friedrich Holderlin

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. — Friedrich Holderlin

The earth with yellow pearsAnd overgrown with roses wildUpon the pond is bent,And swans divine,With kisses drunkYou drop your headsIn the sublimely sobering water.But where, with winter come, am ITo find, alas, the floweres, and whereThe sunshineAnd the shadow of the world?Cold the walls standAnd the wordless, in the windThe weathercocks are rattling. — Friedrich Holderlin

What you seek is close by and rises to meet you. — Friedrich Holderlin

The God, when he draws near, will the heart stand fast.
But, oh my, shame! when of
My shame!
And let me say at once
That I approached to see the Heavenly,
And they cast me down, deep down
Below the living, into the dark cast down
The false priest that I am, to sing,
For those who have ears to hear, the warning song.
There — Friedrich Holderlin

You have lost faith in anything great; you are doomed, then, doomed to perish unless that faith returns, like a comet from unknown skies. — Friedrich Holderlin

It was not delight, not wonder that arose among us, it was the peace of heaven. A thousand times have I said it to her and to myself: the most beautiful is also the most sacred. And such was everything in her. Like her singing, even so was her life. — Friedrich Holderlin

Near and hard
to grasp
Is the God.
But where danger is
Deliverance also grows — Friedrich Holderlin

In the union of nature, loyalty is no dream! We part only to be more intimately at one, more divinely at peace with all, with each other. We die so as to live. — Friedrich Holderlin