"Lessing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exaggerated ideals of what might be possible to humanity. Lastly, there remains to notice the very important influence exercised upon English thought by Coleridge, not only by the force of his own somewhat mystic temperament, but by his familiarity with such writers as Kant, Lessing, Schleiermacher, and Schelling, who had studied far more profoundly than any English philosophers or theologians, the relation of man's higher understanding to matters not cognisable by the ordinary powers of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... though a very sagacious observer, never rose into what can be called a power, he did not modify his age; yet these were both men of extraordinary talent, and Burger a man of undoubted genius. On the other hand, Lessing was merely a man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity. His very defects, and the shallowness of his philosophy, promoted his popularity; and by comparison with the French critics on the dramatic or ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Lessing—calm your fears! None plots to steal your laurel wreaths away. Approach; take tickets: you shall witness here The ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... literary criticism, in itself enough to have made a writer celebrated. His essay on Whittier is not only a just estimate, but seems also in its wise and tender application to include Whittier poetically, as the sea encircles an island. In this department of writing he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe; but with characteristic modesty he celebrated Lowell as the first of American critics. Wasson's book notices in the "Boston Commonwealth" were most interesting reading and contained much ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... being merely a museum catalogue. No one can study philosophy without continual reference to German thought. Even in a subject so English as the study of Shakespeare the work of Gervinus is fundamental, and from the time of Lessing to that of Ten Brink there has been a succession of German commentators. Those of us who have worked at all at science know only too well what we owe to Germany there. It has, indeed, been at times painful to compare the mass of the German output with the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the ninth volume having made its appearance. It has faults of detail, and there are deficiencies in spots, but as a whole it is praised as eminently successful, and truly a new work. The idea in some respects recalls the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, and the Nathan the Wise of Lessing, but the execution has more force and a larger and more imperious movement than either. The Knights of the Spirit are a body of men who are combined in an order to which they give that name, and this book is their history and that of the order. At the same time there is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... "In Lessing's great picture, the good, kind-faced woman whose simplicity Huss blesses as she eagerly heaps up the fagots for his martyrdom, is but the type of vast multitudes of ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... own history, and the more difficult it would be for me to defend it, the more ready I am to allow an advocate to speak for me, an advocate who bears a name no less distinguished than that of G. E. Lessing, who says: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... born at Hamburg on the 11th of September 1723, the son of a hairdresser. He was educated at the Johanneum in that town, where he came under the influence of the rationalist H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768), author of the [v.03 p.0462] famous Wolfenbuetteler Fragmente, published by Lessing. In 1744 he went to Leipzig as a student of theology, but gave himself up entirely to the study of philosophy. This at first induced sceptical notions; a more profound examination of the sacred writings, and of all that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the ascent of man to higher and yet higher grades of civilization; but I consider this ascent to be desperately slow. Were we to wait till average humanity had become as charitably inclined as was Lessing when he wrote "Nathan the Wise," we should wait beyond our day, beyond the days of our children, of our grandchildren, and of our great-grandchildren. But the world's spirit comes to our aid in ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... of this kind produced in modern times is Lessing's play of 'Nathan the Wise.' The object of it is to teach religious toleration. The doctrine is admirable—the mode in which it is enforced is interesting; but it has the fatal fault, that it is not true. Nature does not teach religious toleration ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... set to the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" (In the margin is written "One of the children speaks this.") ... What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P. may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is: "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice,"—which ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... beautiful, but not to be enjoyed without the presence of man. And, secondly, though the Greeks may not have enunciated the principle, that poetry is not the art suited for picturing nature, still they probably had an instinctive feeling of its truth. Poetry, as Lessing pointed out in his Laocoon, has the element of time in it, and is therefore inapplicable in the description of those things which, while composed of various parts, must be comprehended at one glance before the right impression is produced. Look how our modern poet goes to work! He has ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... other hand, might rejoin even then, that, as Lessing suggests, the search for truth is a better thing for us ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... Life of Lessing, by James Sime, is not a great biography, but it is an interesting and most profitable study of a noble man. Lessing will be an inspiration greater almost than any other of the moderns for those who are brought in contact with his fine personality. The book is in 2 volumes, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the third generation of modern German literature. The whole period from 1750 to 1800, being divided into three generations, the first comprehends all those whose period of greatest activity falls into the first decade, from 1750 to 1760, and thereabout. Its chief heroes are Wieland, Klopstock, and Lessing. These men of course were all born before the year 1730. The second generation extends from 1770 to 1790, and thereabouts, and presents a development, which stands to the first in the relation of summer to spring—Goethe and Schiller are the two names by which it will be sent down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... glamour of the army by its subordination of the individual to the communal weal, yet pointed out emphatically that what unites individuals separates nations. "The work of justice shall be peace," he quotes from Isaiah. I am far from supposing that the old Germany of Goethe and Schiller and Lessing is not still latent—indeed, we know that one Professor suggested at a recent Nietzsche anniversary that the Germans should try to rise not to Supermen but to Men, and that another now lies in prison for explaining in his ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... lumber business enthusiastically. You don't know what unsuspected talents I may develop along that line. The worst of it is that we can't be together. But I'll keep my eyes open, and perhaps I'll find a place for you in Lessing." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... differentiate love from lust—the mental and moral charms of the women, or the adoration, sympathy, and affection, of the men. When one of Goethe's characters says: "My life began at the moment I fell in love with you;" or when one of Lessing's characters exclaims: "To live apart from her is inconceivable to me, would be my death"—we still hear the note of selfishness, but with harmonic overtones that change its quality, the result of a change in the way of regarding women. Where women are looked down on as inferiors, as among ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... as through Hyde Park we walk'd, My friend and I, by chance we talk'd Of Lessing's famed Laocooen; And after we awhile had gone In Lessing's track, and tried to see What painting is, what poetry— Diverging to another thought, "Ah," cries my friend, "but who hath taught Why music and the other arts Oftener perform aright their parts Than ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... labored powerfully for the advancement and enlightenment of the people. The mind tore down the barriers that stupid fear had raised between Austria and the other German states, and the great poets who had lately arisen in Germany now became, also, the poets and property of Austria. Austria called Lessing and Klopstock HER poets; like the rest of Germany, she enthusiastically admired Schiller's 'Robbers,' and wept over 'Werther's Sorrows;' she was delighted with the poetry of Wieland; she learned to love the clear and noble ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... a Christian; seventy-four years old; with legs enormously swollen; yet active, lively, cheerful, and kind, and communicative. My eyes felt as if a tear were swelling into them. In the portrait of Lessing there was a toupee periwig, which enormously injured the effect of his physiognomy—Klopstock wore the same, powdered and frizzled. By the bye, old men ought never to wear powder—the contrast between a large snow-white wig and the colour of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now; for he is the father of German literature: it was with the introduction of Shakspeare into German, by Lessing, and the translation of his works by Wieland and Schlegel, that the rapid burst of German literature was most intimately connected. It was not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Art Institute I saw the picture of "Huss before the Council of Constance," by the painter Lessing. It contains upwards of twenty figures. The artist has shown the greatest skill in the expression and grouping of these. Bishops and Cardinals in their splendid robes are seated around a table, covered with parchment folios, and before them stands Huss alone. His ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Neckar and the Rhine, was printed, and listened to with merry laughter and tears of emotion. It was natural that poets should sing his praise. Three of them had been in the Prussian army: Gleim and Lessing, as secretaries of Prussian generals, and Ewald von Kleist, a favorite of the younger literary circles, as an officer, until the bullet struck him at Kunersdorf. But still more touching for us is the loyal devotion of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... eighteenth century. Leibnitz wrote in Latin and French, and his culture was mainly French. His follower, Christian Wolf, however, first used the German language for philosophical writing. But in poetry, Klopstock and Wieland, and, in serious prose, Lessing and Herder, led the way to the great period of German literature. In this period the name of Goethe holds the field, alike in prose and poetry. Goethe was born in 1749, and hence it was the last quarter of the century which saw him reach his zenith. Next ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... History, and Practice of Criticism, with special attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... sense Diderot the greatest genius of the century Mark of his theory of the drama Diderot's influence on Lessing His play, The Natural Son (1757) Its quality illustrated His sense of the importance of pantomime The dialogues appended to The Natural Son His second play, The Father of the Family (1758) One radical error of his dramatic doctrine Modest opinion of his own experiments His ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... assented Mitchell. "But the language isn't his. It existed a long while before he was born. It isn't very pretty, I'll admit. But there are lots of fine things in it. Kant and Lessing, Goethe and Schiller and Heine—they all loved liberty and made it shine out in their work. Do you mean to say that I must give them up and throw my German overboard because these modern ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... earning a livelihood? He justifies his interest, however, by the seriousness and industry with which Shakespeare is studied in Germany and England. With the founts of this study he is apparently familiar, and with the influence of Shakespeare on Lessing, Goethe, and the lesser romanticists. It is interesting to note, too, that two scholars, well known in widely different fields, Monrad, the philosopher—for some years a sort of Dr. Johnson in the literary circles of Christiania—and Unger, ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Some say, like Lessing in his "Treatise on Theology," "What hinders us from admitting a Purgatory? as if the great majority of Christians had not really adopted it. No, this intermediate state being taught and recognized by the ancient Church, notwithstanding ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... and eyes moved, and a screw inside them creaked an accompaniment to their movements. He saw something gruesome among them—a misshapen figure, decked with tapes and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which "Lessing" was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the worst: it was the Homeric Chimera; in front it was Strauss, behind it was Gervinus, and in the middle Chimera. The tout-ensemble was Lessing. This discovery caused him ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Klopstock, Wieland, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller—those were the great names that were soon to shine like stars in the literary firmament. But the lesser men who broke the ground and opened paths for their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... neglectful of her for the sake of his work; he did not, perhaps, receive much pleasure from this stout, plain, prosaic lady (like one of Rubens's women grown old, as Lamartine later described her) whom he left to her letter-writing, her reading of Kant, of La Harpe, of Shakespeare, of Lessing; to her painting lessons, and long discussions on art with Monsieur Fabre. The woman whose presence, no longer exciting, was doubtless a matter of indifference to him. But, nevertheless, it seems to me probable ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) |
