E.T.A. Hoffmann

“Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“So true it is, that even the shortest step out of the immediate circle of one's best friends, is equal, in effect,…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“It may be, after all," said the Student Anselmus to himself, "that the superfine stomachic liqueur, which I took somewhat freely in…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“But if, like a bold painter, you had first sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the picture you had…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“None but a poet can understand a poet; none but a romantic spirit transported with poetry and consecrated in the Holy of…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“If there is a dark and hostile power, laying its treacherous toils within us, by which it holds us fast and draws…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“She was not too tall, and of a voluptuous build, so that my eyes wandered amid many charms that hitherto had been…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“Perhaps, too, you will then believe that nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, and that all that a…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight…

— E.T.A. Hoffmann