Selected Poems and Fragments Quotes

“when i was a boy
a god often rescued me
from the shouts and the rods of men
and i played among trees and flowers
secure in their kindness
and the breezes of heaven
were playing there too.

and as you delight
the hearts of plants
when they stretch towards you
with little strength

so you delighted the heart in me
father Helios, and like Endymion
i was your favourite,
Moon. o all

you friendly
and faithful gods
i wish you could know
how my soul has loved you.

even though when i called to you then
it was not yet with names, and you
never named me as people do
as though they knew one another

i knew you better
than i have ever known them.
i understood the stillness above the sky
but never the words of men.

trees were my teachers
melodious trees
and i learned to love
among flowers.

i grew up in the arms of the gods.”
― Friedrich Holderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“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 Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“Good Advice You’ve 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 Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“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 Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“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 Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“Being at one is godlike and good, but human, too human, the mania
Which insists that there is only the One, one country, one truth and one way.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“Hield mij aan't leven der mensen dit hart maar niet meer gebonden,
dat van liefde niet aflaat, hoe graag zou ik mét u hier wonen!”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“But now day breaks! I waited and saw it come,
And what I saw, the hallowed, my word shall convey,
For she, she herself, who is older than the ages
And higher than the gods of Orient and Occident,
Nature has now awoken amid the clang of arms,
And from high Aether down to the low abyss,
According to fixed law, begotten, as in the past, on holy Chaos,
Delight, the all-creative,
Delights in self-renewal.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“These fruits are ripe, dipped in fire,
Cooked and tested here on earth.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“These fruits are ripe, dipped in fire,
Cooked and sampled here on earth.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“But the sower Loves to see a woman Fallen asleep in the daytime Over a half-knitted stocking.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“Go down, then, lovely sun, for but little they
Regarded you, nor holly one, knew your worth,
Since without toil you rose, and quiet,
Over a people for ever toiling.

To me, however, kindly you rise and set,
O Glorious light, and brightly my eyes respond,
For godly, silent reverence I
Learned when Diotima soothed my frenzy.

O how I listened, Heaven's own messenger,
To you, my teacher! Love! How to the golden day
These eyes transfused with thanks looked up from
Gazing at you. And at once more living

The brooks began to murmur, more lovingly
The blossoms of dark Earth breathed their scent at me
And through the silver clouds a smiling
Aether bowed down to bestow his blessing.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments

“In gods and godhead only he can truly believe who himself is godlike.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments