Johann Georg Hamann Quotes & Sayings

I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter — Johann Georg Hamann

Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it. — Johann Georg Hamann

The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa. — Johann Georg Hamann

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it. — Johann Georg Hamann

A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow. — Johann Georg Hamann

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter — Johann Georg Hamann

Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it. — Johann Georg Hamann

What for others is style, for me is soul. — Johann Georg Hamann

A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. — Johann Georg Hamann

Physics is nothing but the ABC's. Nature is an equation with an unknown, a Hebrew word which is written only with consonants to which reason has to add the dots. — Johann Georg Hamann

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home? — Johann Georg Hamann

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language ... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself. — Johann Georg Hamann

The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer imitated. — Johann Georg Hamann

When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function. — Johann Georg Hamann

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. — Johann Georg Hamann

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies. — Johann Georg Hamann

All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward. — Johann Georg Hamann

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves. — Johann Georg Hamann

Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert. — Johann Georg Hamann

Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. — Johann Georg Hamann

Indeed, if a chief question does remain: how is the power to think possible? - The power to think right and left, before and without, with and above experience? then it does not take a deduction to prove the genealogical priority of language. — Johann Georg Hamann

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself. — Johann Georg Hamann

The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece. — Johann Georg Hamann

Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word. — Johann Georg Hamann

Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith. — Johann Georg Hamann

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone. — Johann Georg Hamann

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society. — Johann Georg Hamann

What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger. — Johann Georg Hamann

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him — Johann Georg Hamann