Ludwig Tieck

“ All is one, and harmonizes in our souls.
— Except Eulenböck's nose, cried the librarian, quite drunk: that has no touch of scarlet, no transitions in its tones, to blend it with the face; the dark red purple roasts in its magic kitchen, as the beet-root waxes red under ground in the realms of damp night, though quite secluded from the sun. Can this excrescence belong to the life? Can the god of wine so have pampered it? Never! It is a clumsy shell, an ugly case for malice and lies.
— Puffy emptiness, cried the Bookseller, brittle splendour, frail mortality! ”

“ Now I begin to understand all the technical designs of Julio Romano; thou wilt not believe how many excellences I had overlooked in the picture, how many passages of his racy pencil. Ay, it is delightful to penetrate so thoroughly into such an artist; and when one comprehends him entirely, and in all his parts alike, there creeps over us in the full sense of his high merit a feeling of self-complacency, as though we ourselves had some share in the display of his genius; for fully to understand a work of art, they say, is in some measure to produce it. ”

“ Already at the distance of a few miles, he felt how much the parting grieved him; for the first time in his life, he experienced the pains of separation; the foreign objects seemed to him almost savage; he felt as if he had been lost in some unfriendly solitude. Then the thought came on him, that his youth was over; that he had found a home to which he now belonged, in which his heart had taken root; he was almost ready to lament the lost levity of younger years; and his mind was in the saddest mood, when he turned aside into a village inn to pass the night. ”

“ In sweetest numbers sing, what now thou dream'st.
Tell them of Oberon and Titania's strife
And their glad reconcilement—This, the meed
Of thanks, thou shalt requite our gifts withal.—
⁠Now dawn, soft blushing, calls the slumbering day;
The moon looks pale, faint gleams the morning star,
Back to our woods we Fairies must away;—
But often near thee, gentle Boy, will I
Hovering, fill all thy soul with keen delight.
On moonlight nights, when pensively thou sit'st
Musing beside some silver rill, or rov'st
In spring-tide, drinking in with ravished ear
The song of Philomel—I will be by. ”

“ Which of us has the fairest claim to be called diseased, said Emilius, I will not examine. But I cannot think that your incomprehensible frivolousness, your hunger and thirst for dissipation, your restless chase after pleasures that leave the heart empty, are altogether the healthiest state of human nature. On certain points at all events you might make a little allowance for my weakness, if you are determined to call it so; and you know there is nothing in the world that so sets my whole soul on edge as a ball with its frightful music. ”

“ An extraordinary resemblance to an old friend almost compels me to treat you as a beloved brother, nay, I may say as a son. It is long since any stranger has visited me in my solitude, here I learn but little of the world, and that is why such a visit as yours is so acceptable to me." "I too am delighted with your society," replied Edmond, "and I ask myself not without sadness, wherefore it should not be granted to man to spend his days in peaceful quiet, elevated and instructed by nature, enlivened and comforted by the simplest and most delightful enjoyments." ”

“ Day and night I mused thereon, and imagined high mountains, caves, and pine-forests, before me: my fancy created for itself immense rocks; I heard, in thought, the din of the chase, the horns, the cry of the hounds and of the game; all my dreams were filled with these things, and therefore I had no longer any rest or peace. The plains, the castle, my father's little contracted garden with the prim flower-beds; the confined dwelling; the wide heaven extended all around so dreary, and embracing no heights, no lofty mountains,—all became more and more melancholy and odious to me. ”

“ Oh, who then is close to my heart, if he is a stranger to me? May your tongue cause you endless torment for saying such a thing, which it grieves my heart to hear. How could he be a stranger to me? For then I would be a stranger to myself, since he is nothing but what am I; and I can only be to him what he is to me? My breath, my spirit, my life, everything, I owe it all to him. My heart has not belonged to me since I first met him. Oh, dear Gertrude, the whole immeasurable world would mean nothing to me if he were merely a stranger?
Gertraud comforted her, and the princess went to bed ”

“ What we do from conviction as we call it, from pondering about a matter and balancing it first in one scale and then in the other, over and over again, is seldom worth much. Whatever is permanent, characteristic, genuine in our nature, is instinct, prejudice, call it superstition; a conclusion without question or inquiry, an act because one cannot help it. Such is this of mine! You may look upon it as a vow, a solemn oath which I have sworn to myself, and which I cannot violate without the most atrocious perjury against my own heart. ”

“ Now really, cried Edward aloud, if this is a picture of Rubens, as it must be, that glorious man surpassed all other masters in such subjects! That lives! That breathes! How the fresh rose blooms against the still fresher lips! How softly and delicately do the hues of both play into one another, and yet so distinctly parted! And that polish of the rounded shoulder, the flaxen hair scattered over it in disorder! How is it possible that old Walther can hang his best piece so high up and without a frame, when all the other trash glitters in the most costly decorations? ”

“ A wedding is such an out-of-the-way event in ones life; the bride and bridegroom are so suddenly plunged, by a sort of magic, head over heels into a new unaccustomed element, that it is impossible to throw too much madness and folly into this festival, in order to keep pace with the whirlpool that is bearing a brace of human beings from the state where they were two to the state where they become one, and that all things round about may be fitting accompaniments for the dizzy dream on the wings of which they are floating toward a new life. ”

“ Oh, my lost youth! sobbed Edward; oh, ye golden days, ye weeks, and years! how sinfully have I squandered you away, as though there lay not in your hours the germ of virtue, of honour, and of happiness; as though this precious treasure of time were ever to be redeemed. Like a glass of stale water have I poured forth my life and the essence of my heart. Oh! what a state of being might have opened on me, what happiness for myself and others, had not an evil genius blinded my eyes! ”

“ Already accustomed to look upon every thing as a riddle, as a concealed mystery of love, the celebration of the Mass appeared to me as elevated and divine, as revelation and work of art, as type and fulfilment at the same time, and each word spoken, or sung as it fell on my ear in the full force of its signification, drove back a bolt from my heart. Art and nature changed before my eyes, the element of water became glorified, in the fire, in the light of the church tapers as well as that of the house, I perceived and recognised the whole tenor of the secret of nature. ”

“ A fresh wind from the land blew through the garden and the trees rustled in a lively and merry fashion; but this only made Peter feel all the more sorrowful.
— O faithless one, he exclaimed. I am an ungrateful wretch. Is this how I will repay her love? Am I to return to my fatherland as a perjurer? That would earn me a bad reputation among my kinsmen and all the nobility. And how could I ever look Magelone in the eyes, should she be still alive? And why should she not still be alive, when my life was so miraculously saved? Oh, I am a cowardly slave. I haven't even taken any risks for myself! ”