Von Hofmannsthal Quotes & Sayings

First, to be able to love, then to learn that body and spirit are one. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

To grow mature is to separate more distinctly, to connect more closely. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

We have fewer friends than we imagine, but more than we know. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

The activity of modern poets stands under the decree of necessity, as though they were building a pyramid, the monstruos residence of a dead King or an unborn God. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

To be modern means to like antique furniture - and youthful neurosis. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

The process of which I am speaking is nothing less than a conservative revolution on such a scale as the history of Europe has never known. Its object is form, a new German reality, in which the whole nation will share. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Nothing becomes reality in the political life of a nation that was not present in its literature as spirit. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Words performed through music can express what language alone had exhausted — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

wir konnen warten. wissen macht frei [we can wait. knowledge liberates]. in these confident words the stalwart Ritter von Schmerling expressed the rationalistic expectations of the political process at the beginning of the liberal era in 1861.

at the end of that era, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, scion of a cultivated middle-class family, offered a different formula for political success: politics is magic. he who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him will they follow. — Carl E. Schorske

The most dangerous of our impulses reign in ourselves against ourselves. To dissolve them is a creative act. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Reality lies in the greatest enchantment you have ever experienced. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

How we feel is how we want to be heard. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

Knowledge is little; to know the right context is much; to know the right spot is everything. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

The soul is never wholly assembled, except in delight. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

I wanted to show that the fables and mythic tales which the ancients have handed down to us and in which painters and sculptors never cease to find mindless pleasure are the hieroglyphics of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom. I sometimes thought I felt its breath, as though coming from behind a veil. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal