Werfel Quotes & Sayings

My biggest advice for high school girls is to not take yourself so seriously. — Jillian Rose Reed

Yes, death is strong, but look you, the strongest, Stronger is music than death. — Franz Werfel

Magnify the divine mystery and the holiness of mankind. — Franz Werfel

I regarded it more as an honor than a disgrace to be permitted to share this fate of the complete destruction of literary existence in Germany with such eminent contemporaries as Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Werfel, Freud, Einstein, and many others whose work I consider incomparably more important than my own, — Stefan Zweig

For many people it is depressing even to move house. A lost fragment of life always remains. To move to another town, settle in a foreign country, is for everyone a major decision. But, to be suddenly driven forth, within twenty-four hours, from one's home, one's work, the reward of years of steady industry. To become a helpless prey of help. To be sent defenceless out to Asiatic highroads, with several thousand miles of dust, stones, and morass before one. To know that one will never again find a decently human habitation, never again sit down to a proper table. Yet this is all nothing. To be more shackled than any convict. To be counted as outside the law, a vagabond, whom anyone has the right to kill unpunished. — Franz Werfel

I live in an unethical society that coarsens the sensibilities and thwarts the capacities for goodness of most people but makes available for minority consumption an astonishing array of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures. Those who don't enjoy (in both senses) my pleasures have every right, from their side, to regard my consciousness as spoiled, corrupt, decadent. I, from my side, can't deny the immense richness of these pleasures, or my addiction to them. — Susan Sontag

Every man and every nation at one time or other becomes the weak. That's why nobody should tolerate persecution, let alone extermination, as a precedent. (p581) — Franz Werfel

False ideals cannot be shattered by criticism. Right ideals must take up the battle against them. — Franz Werfel

We belong far less to where we've come from than where we want to go. — Franz Werfel

Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics. — George Soros

The basic formula of all sin is: frustrated or neglected love. — Franz Werfel

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain. — Maya Angelou

My kids have grown up knowing nothing other than me being gone all the time and playing in golf tournaments. That's what they know. — Stewart Cink

Everything in this world is primarily a matter of morals, and only very much later one of politics. — Franz Werfel

Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy. — Franz Werfel

Happiness is ... the grace of being permitted to unfold ... all the spiritual powers planted within us. — Franz Werfel

Which road, which road did you take
That brought you here at last?

No road, no road did I take.
I leaped, I leaped from dream to dream.

— Franz Werfel

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract. — Richard Diebenkorn

The old sporadic fanaticism of religious hatred had been skillfully perverted into the cold, steady fanaticism of national hate. — Franz Werfel

. . . failure is also the stern parent of truth. (p525) — Franz Werfel

Between too early and too late, there is never more than a moment. — Franz Werfel