“If there is a dark and hostile power, laying its treacherous toils within us, by which it holds us fast and draws us along the path of peril and destruction, which we should not otherwise have trod; if, I say… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that the poet… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“So true it is, that even the shortest step out of the immediate circle of one's best friends, is equal, in effect, to the… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me- and worship me a little. Should anyone be audacious enough to… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share
“We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened,… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“It may be, after all," said the Student Anselmus to himself, "that the superfine stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely in Monsieur Conradi's,… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“But if, like a bold painter, you had first sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the picture you had in your own soul, you would then easily have been able to deepen and intensify the colors one after the other, until the varied throng of living figures carried your friends away and they, like you, saw themselves… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share
“None but a poet can understand a poet; none but a romantic spirit transported with poetry and consecrated in the Holy of Holies an… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“If there is a dark and hostile power, laying its treacherous toils within us, by which it holds us fast and draws us along… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“She was not too tall, and of a voluptuous build, so that my eyes wandered amid many charms that hitherto had been strangers to… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all that a writer can… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
“There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy… — E.T.A. Hoffmann Copy Share Image
