Herr Quotes & Sayings

Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that." "Indeed. Then what does it depend on?" "On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. — Hermann Hesse

We came to fear something more complicated than death, an annihilation less final but more complete, and we got out. Becausewe all knew that if you stayed too long you became one of those poor bastards who had to have a war on all the time, and where was that? — Michael Herr

Hotel's full up, I'm afraid, Mr. Roper, Jonathan rehearsed in another last-ditch effort to fend off the inevitable. Herr Meister is desolated. A temporary clerk has made an unpardonable error. However, we have managed to obtain rooms for you at the Baur au Lac, et cetera. — John Le Carre

Enjoy your time in Germany, Herr Lawrence. Auf Wiedersehen." "Off-feet-a-sing," he replied. — Bryan Devore

When I asked Herr Wedekind, the baker, why he had believed in National Socialism, he said, "Because it promised to solve the unemployment problem. And it did. But I never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did." I thought I had struck pay dirt, and I said, "What do you mean, 'what it would lead to,' Herr Wedekind?" "War," he said. "Nobody ever imagined it would lead to war." The — Milton Sanford Mayer

It's a corny old gag about Las Vegas, the temporal city if there ever was one, trying to camouflage the hours and retard the dawn, when everybody knows that if you're feeling lucky you're really feeling time in its rawest form, and if you're not feeling lucky, they've got a clock at the bus station. — Michael Herr

I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. You don't know what a media freak is until you've seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off for the networks. They were insane, but the war hadn't done that to them. Most combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few firefights, but there were always the ones who couldn't let that go, these few who were up there doing numbers for the cameras ... We'd all seen too many movies, stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain connections difficult. — Michael Herr

Anna is something wrong " he asked his brow furrowed.

Yes I want to say. You ran a prison camp for Jews. You keep my parents locked in the ghetto. You let your wife's father be killed and would kill Jacob too if given the chance. Your wretched Gestapo came to our house and now Lukasz might have to leave us. Let me count the ways. Of course I did not dare to say any of this. "No Herr Kommandant " I replied managing to keep my voice even. "Everything is fine. — Pam Jenoff

Do you smoke, Herr Cabal?"
"Only to be antisocial," replied Cabal, making no move. — Jonathan L. Howard

That's basically the mantra of Herr Silverman's teaching - think for yourself and do what's right for you, but let others do the same. — Matthew Quick

Mujo is a refugee in Germany, has no job, but has a lot of time, so he goes to a Turkish bath. The bath is full of German businessmen with towels around their waists, huffing and puffing, but every once in a while a cell phone rings and they pull their phone out from under the towel and say, Bitte? Mujo seems to be the only one without a cell phone, so he goes to the bathroom and stuffs toilet paper up his butt. He walks back out, a long trail of toilet paper behind him. So a German says, you have some paper, Herr, sticking out behind you. Oh, Mujo says, it looks like I have received a fax. — Aleksandar Hemon

And, therefore, hold your head high, Herr Stiefel! - Such a crisis as this comes to all of us and will soon be surmounted. If all of us had recourse to dagger or poison in such cases, there would soon be no men left in the world. — Frank Wedekind

Herr Konsul, sorry to take your time. A man's voice. The blood in Reiss' veins instantly stopped its motion. — Philip K. Dick

A human being can never be broken — Hugh Herr

Somewhere on the periphery of that total Vietnam issue whose daily reports made the morning paper too heavy to bear, lost in the surreal contexts of television, there was a story that was as simple as it had always been, men hunting men, a hideous war and all kinds of victims. — Michael Herr

Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar. [ ... ] I knew one 4th division Lurp who took his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit and ups from the right, one to cut the trail for him and the other to send him down it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him, that could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope. "They sure give you the range," he said. — Michael Herr

Once more a red fire blows steeply upwards ... the factory will do no more work for Herr Churchill ... tomorrow morning Coventry will lie in smoke and ruins. — Joseph Goebbels

Maybe nothing's so unfunny as an omen read wrong. — Michael Herr

If you want to do something big, something daring and grand and huge, then don't automatically shrug and assume that you're too young, too old, too weak, too busy, too poor, too frazzled, or too small. Learn, persevere, sweat. Take the time to figure out how to do it correctly, then go to it with a giant spirit of adventure and enjoy the climb. — Patricia Ellis Herr

And they were killers. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be? — Michael Herr

IN the year 1888 Herr von Pasenow was seventy, and there were people who felt an extraordinary and inexplicable repulsion when they saw him coming towards them in the streets of Berlin, indeed, who in their dislike of him actually maintained that he must be an evil old man. Small, but well — Hermann Broch

Herr Schiller? Are there really any such things as ghosts?' The old man did not even show surprise at the question. He heaved a sigh. 'Yes Pia, there are. But never the ones you expect. — Helen Grant

Although once when we were talking after class, Herr Silverman told me that when someone rises up and holds himself to a higher standard, even when doing so benefits others, average people resent it, mostly because they're not strong enough to do the same. — Matthew Quick

I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford. — E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl Of Halifax

Sometimes life holds more than people allow themselves to see. Such individuals may continue to live as though they are blind for eternities before realizing they were merely clamping their eyes shut. — Emily Herr

Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability. — Hugh Herr

And just remember Comrades this one thing: the most important thing you have is power! Hang on to power at all costs! Without it, you are nothing!" He didn't mention the democracy demonstrations and the fact that the Soviets were backing away from us,' Herr Bohnsack says, 'but it was clear he must, at some level, have felt the end coming. — Anna Funder

To begin with I thought we were driving around in circles until I realised that Herr Starbuck owned dozens of coffee houses. — Timur Vermes

Every time I had a vision of myself lying dead somewhere, it was up there, in the Highlands. — Michael Herr

What do you call each other? What are your pet names? Dearest? Turtledove? Thor? Herr Handsome of my heart? Lizard of my labia? Captain of my clitoris? — Penny Reid

Ash, ash - -
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
From the poem Lady Lazarus — Sylvia Plath

For years now there had been no country here but the war. — Michael Herr

First and foremost, we want a good clean fight." He adress only yhe Fuhrer now. "Unless, of course, Herr Hitler, you begin to lose. Should this occur, I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench and filth into the canvas. — Markus Zusak

Herr Reichsmarschall, it is no contraption. Guaranteed your personal and material support, I am convinced that in a few years there will be few propellered aircraft to be seen in the skies! — Lutz Warsitz

Age, like wealth is but a mental abstraction, my boy"~ Herr Doktor Pavel — K.W. Jeter

Live free, dream loud, be inspired, find your power. — Ben Herr

Decided it was time for the children to return to their studies, and although it seemed ridiculous to Bruno that school should take place when there were only two students to teach, both Mother and Father agreed that a tutor should come to the house every day and fill their mornings and afternoons with lessons. A few mornings later a man called Herr — John Boyne

Even then, she still held a secret passion for Mozart. When he died in 1791, her grief made her provoke the people into starting the French Revolution. Stepping up to the guillotine herself, she ordered the executioner to behead her, thereby committing assisted suicide. — Yasutaka Tsutsui

I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author.
Wine is bottled poetry — Robert Louis Stevenson

No one can say how far Herr Hitler's empire will extend before this war is over, but I have no doubt it will pass away perhaps more swiftly than Napoleon's empire and without its glory. The British spirit and temperment, bred in freedom, will prove more enduring and resilient than the most efficient mechanical discipline.
Winston Churchill — Michael Tappenden

Over-the-knee socks remind me of the 1920s, silent films, and the stars of the era who wore the rolled-down stockings. They sort of referenced that in 'Cabaret,' when Liza Minnelli was singing 'Mein Herr,' and I love the way she looks in that scene. — Amy Heckerling

We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop. — Michael Herr

Herr Siedler smiles as if to say: You and I, son, we know history takes a longer course, don't we? — Anthony Doerr

Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs. — Franz Kafka

Don't you see, Brother?" Avi pleaded. "They do not want us here. We are not safe." "Nonsense - we're Germans," Dr. Weisz shot back, fuming but careful not to let himself be heard by the neighbors. "Faithful, proud, loyal citizens of the Fatherland." "That's not how Herr Hitler sees it." "His days are numbered." "They're not," Avi said. "His power is growing. He's gained full control of the army. There are rumors he wants to seize Czechoslovakia and maybe all of Poland. He's already grabbed the Rhineland and the Sudetenland. Who's going to stop him now? — Joel C. Rosenberg

How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice? — Michael Herr

You can still see the shadow from when the Zeppelin floated over America; it took like Islam in the desert ... — Michael Herr

You could also hear the other, some young soldier speaking in all bloody innocence, saying, 'All that's just a load, man. We're here to kill gooks. Period.' Which wasn't at all true of me. I was there to watch. — Michael Herr

Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamenta to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things. — Robert Walser

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed. — Robert Kennedy

Some people think 1963's a long time ago; when a dead American in the jungle was an event, a grim thrilling novelty. It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places with little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know. — Michael Herr

In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun. — Thomas Mann

If war was hell and only hell and there were no other colors in the palate I don't think people would continue to make war, — Michael Herr

It is not too fantastic to say that he desired them with some of the absolute passion that characterised the exposed and flaming heart of Jesus which hung on Emilie's wall. Since this narrative has tried to avoid the canonisation of the Herr Direktor, the idea of the sensual Oskar as the desirer of souls has to be proved. — Thomas Keneally

My paper has to be very long and complex," I said. "I shall cite all the great thinkers - Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud." "What about Adolf Hitler?" "Oh, him. He's not a thinker. He's just a ranter and raver." "There may come a time," said Pepi, "when people cannot tell the difference." "Impossible," I solemnly predicted. "I have read Hitler's book Mein Kampf and also some works by his colleague Herr Alfred Rosenberg because I am a fair-minded, objective person and I believe one should always hear out all sides before making a decision, and so I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that these men are idiots. Their ideas about how the Jews have poisoned their so-called superior Aryan race and caused all of Germany's troubles are utter nonsense. No intelligent person could possibly believe them. Hitler is laughable. He will soon disappear." "Just like all your old boyfriends," Pepi said with his sly smile. — Edith Hahn Beer

People living in different places invent different words for things, and then the words control how they think. The Masai people, for instance, do not have a word that means 'the future.' Therefore, when they talk of time, they always talk about the present time.
Hope, for example, lives in the future. The things one hopes for are always things in the future. So the Masai people may never have felt hope, since they have no idea of a future.
But, if the Masai live without hope, they also live without fear. For fear is always about the future, too.

-Herr Winteler — Robert Cwiklik

You don't have to be a seasoned tactician to realize that your ass is cold. — Michael Herr

All right, Herr Stern, if God made man in His image, which race is most like him? Is a Pole more like him than a Czech? — Thomas Keneally

Mrs. Seaton?" His lordship was frowning at the table, but when he looked up at her, his expression became perfectly blank - but for the mischief in his eyes. "My lord?" Anna cocked her head and wanted to stomp her foot. The earl in a playful mood was more bothersome than the earl in a grouchy mood, but at least he wasn't kissing her. He held up her right glove, twirling it by a finger, and he wasn't going to give it back, she knew, unless she marched up to him and retrieved it. "Thank you," she said, teeth not quite clenched. She walked over to him, and held out her hand, but wasn't at all prepared for him to take her hand in his, bring it to his lips, then slap the glove down lightly into her palm. "You are welcome." He snagged a third muffin from the bread box and went out the back door, whistling some complicated theme by Herr Mozart that Lord Valentine had been practicing for hours earlier in the week. Leaving — Grace Burrowes

Humans are not disabled. A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled. We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation. — Hugh Herr

Agent Brendel: These are the descendants of our Lord. I myself have seen the documents that prove it. We have protected them and their predecessors for nineteen centuries, and whatever their appearance now, we believe - we know - their child will be the next messiah.

Starr: He's shitting in his hand, Brendel.

The brother hurls his feces at, and hits Agent Brendel in the face

Agent Brendel: Have faith, Herr Starr. — Garth Ennis

You Englishmen,' said Herr Wurter. 'You are all the same. Wherever you are you behave as if you were at home and your word was law. — Derek Raymond

Herr Thiessen is always pleased when the circus arrives in his native Germany, but this time he is particularly delighted that it has arrived quite near Munich, so there is no need for him to secure rooms in another city. Also, — Erin Morgenstern

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods. — Michael Herr

Herr Hitler is the very person he wants to eradicate. He might have started out with good intentions, but he is mentally unbalanced and now almost insane." "Then how come he is loved by the whole nation?" Harold interjected. "His first programs of building the Autobahn, of installing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (national labor service) were almost strokes of genius. This endeared him with our people suffering from unemployment. Then he promised things which he is unable to deliver. His hypnotic power as an orator causes the people to cheer. They don't love him. They are simply mesmerized by a charlatan. — Horst Christian

Please, mein Herr, shoot the children cleanly. — Jonathan Littell

But in the great hour Heaven sent the German people a great man, Herr von Cuno. — Adolf Hitler

Yes, you have the very soul of me, Elisabeth."
"Then your name, mein Herr."
He laughed softly, but it was a gasp of pain, not of joy. "No."
"Why?"
"So you will forget me," he said simply. "You cannot love a man with no name. — S. Jae-Jones

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
("The Wondersmith") — Fitz-James O'Brien

And I know, because I've been there, that there is a hellworld where you're always expected to have an opinion about everything all the time: a judgment, a take - a 'view,' in the most ordinary sense of the word. — Michael Herr

You are the monster I claim, mein Herr. — S. Jae-Jones

Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal, vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays. — Michael Herr

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something. — Eva Ibbotson

But not all Jews were victims- look at Chairman Rumkowski, who sat safe with his new wife in his cushy home making lists, with the blood of my family on his hands. And not all Germans were murderers. Look at Herr Fassbinder, who had saved so many children on the night that children were taken away. — Jodi Picoult

A young musician asked Mozart, 'Herr Mozart, it has been suggested to me that I write a symphony. Would you be good enough to tell me how to go about it?' Mozart thought for a moment and gently suggested, 'You are still too young to write symphonies. Why not try ballads first?' 'You wrote symphonies when you were ten years old,' argued the young man indignantly. 'Ah, yes, but I didn't ask how,' replied Mozart. Absolutely. Mozart — Ashwin Sanghi

We're beginning the age in which machines attached to our bodies will make us stronger and more efficient, — Hugh Herr

I met this kid from Miles City, Montana, who read the Stars and Stripes every day, checking the casualty lists to see if by some chance anybody form his home town had been killed. He didn't even know if there was anyone else from Miles City in Vietnam, but he checked anyway because he knew for sure that if there was someone else and they got killed, he would be all right. I mean, can you just see *two* guys from a raggedy-ass town like Miles City getting killed in Vietnam? — Michael Herr

If that energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years. — Michael Herr

I didn't view my body as broken, I reasoned that a human being can never be broken. Technology is broken. Technology is inadequate. — Hugh Herr

What is the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?
The Boy Scouts have adult leadership. — Michael Herr

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland. — Robert Harris

It is over, the Reich walls have collapsed, my generals have betrayed me and my army refuses to fight, this is the herr Doernitz! I only hope you can turn this around. — Adolf Hitler

Herr Schroder has conducted two electoral campaigns, and he is doing it again now, by not telling people what is really necessary. He keeps avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable issues, those that imply changes and therefore provoke discussions. — Angela Merkel

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice about how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But, Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' Mozart replied, 'I never asked how. — Isaac Asimov

Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony; I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you've never heard it. — Michael Herr

We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. Employing saturation-bombing techniques, we delivered more than 110,000 tons of bombs to those hills during the eleven-week containment of Khe Sanh. — Michael Herr

With Herr Hitler's consent, he just passed a new ordinance," the man said. "It's a law called the Regulations against Jews' Possession of Weapons. Effective immediately, no Jew in Germany has the right to own, possess, or carry a gun. All weapons and ammunition in the possession of Jews must be turned over forthwith. Any Jews caught with a handgun or rifle will be imprisoned and fined." "And?" Dr. Weisz asked. "I'm no sportsman. Are you?" "No, I'm not," the man from Dresden said. "But don't you see? These attacks on our communities are just the beginning. Now Hitler is disarming us, and when we are completely defenseless, he will come for us, for all of us. Mark my words. — Joel C. Rosenberg

Blood, Herr Reiss, can never be eradicated like ink. — Philip K. Dick

There are so many things I wish I had learned when I was 16 or 17 years old. They would have been game changers in my life. — Pete Herr

All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it. — Michael Herr

There was a black marine called Philly Dog who'd been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could so the kickers what he could do with some city ground. (In Hue he turned out to be incredibly valuable. I saw him pouring out about a hundred rounds of .30-caliber fire into a breach in the wall, laughing, 'You got to bring some to get some'; he seemed to be about the only man in Delta Company who hadn't been hurt yet.) — Michael Herr

Herr Vogel from Heide Strasse. Made all his money from his father. He throws it away on women — Markus Zusak

And a pamphlet called Pick me up There is no genuine hatred against Herr Hitler. — Winston Churchill

We're entering a bionic era where we actually are beginning to see technology that's sophisticated enough to emulate key physiological functions. — Hugh Herr

There is no need why you should want me for a brother. I am German, I shall always be German. You do not like how I behave. Your brother, Midshipman Ginger, called me by names of contempt.Let me go, Herr Dym; let me go."
Through the gloom he saw the Englishman's eyes looking at him, resolute and grave."Anthony", said Dym quietly, "it is just because you are my brother that I cannot let you go. — Constance Savery

Perhaps, Herr Ditzen, it is less important where one lives than how one lives. — Erik Larson