Author of quotes: Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

The time is approaching when the one who writes for you, the kind reader, will be forced to part with you, and he is seized by longing and timidity. May it be pleasing to you with true cheerfulness and unstrained heart to contemplate these strange images, even to make friends with them; they are instilled in the poet by a ghostly spirit - Phantazus - whose bizarre, whimsical nature he may have allowed himself to be too carried away.

Life Medic, you've been chatting for half an hour, but if I'm damned, if you understand a single word.

wisdom! - so I happened to hear in the theater; some melancholy prince was speaking; he was dressed all in black and was very much afraid of another, who was walking around in gray cardboard armor.

Yes, you are a poet, much higher than other of those to whom you read your experiments, in which you tried to put the inner music on paper with the help of pen and ink, believe.

Every lover wants to hear only about his own love and considers only one of it worthy of speech, just as every poet willingly hears only his own poems.

I argued that without the permission of the prince there can be neither thunder nor lightning, and that if we have good weather and an excellent harvest, then we owe this solely to the exorbitant labors of the prince and noble gentlemen - his entourage, who very wisely consult about this in their chambers, while the common people plow the land and sow.

He, like his ancestor, was nicknamed Pretextatus von Mondschein and was distinguished by an excellent education and pleasant manners, never confused cases, wrote his name in French letters, in general, his handwriting was legible and even sometimes did business, especially in bad weather.

Here my soul is visited by a sweet peace. Lying on the grass covered with flowers, I gaze into the boundless blue of the sky, and above me, above the jubilant forest, golden clouds stretch, like wonderful dreams from a distant world, full of blissful joy!

I will ask you myself, gracious reader, were there not in your life hours, days, and even whole weeks when all your ordinary affairs and occupations aroused painful displeasure in you, when everything that at other times seemed important and significant to your feelings and thoughts , suddenly began to seem vulgar and insignificant?

All your grief is that you are too staring at the glass. Well, well, it's not a big deal, it happens to everyone, and on the gracious feast of the Ascension it's not a sin to miss an extra glass. There are such passages with the people of God, because you, sir, are a candidate of theology.

You've always had some inclination toward poetry, and with that it's easy to fall into the fantastic and romantic.

Every person, imagining himself free, only serves the terrible game of the dark forces: he will resist them in vain, it is necessary to humbly demolish what is destined by fate itself.

There is nothing more surprising and insane than real life itself, and the poet can only imagine its vague reflection, as if in a roughly polished mirror.

Have you, my benevolent reader, experienced something that would completely capture your heart, feelings and thoughts, crowding out everything else?