Heinrich Heine Quotes
Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.
Heine, Heinrich. The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine. Edited by Havelock Ellis, Walter Scott, 1887, p. 319.
This is a very interesting quotation in that it began as a bogus quotation. Someone made it up and posted it on the internet. Soon it had been picked up by many of the Internet quotation sites which just “scrape” other sites and do no research themselves. Soon it was all over the internet. When he appeared on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked him about the attribution. He then embraced the quotation as representing his real feelings. In the area of the Internet, this phenomenon has been possible and in this case actually happened.
What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that the author was not a religious leader or a philosopher, but a hard-nosed military man and ruler. He recognized the corrosive effect on a society that a thirst for revenge can bring.
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered part of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
