"German language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of every kind, were almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence, wrote in the Latin language. Some discerning spirits became sensible that the German language was susceptible of great improvement, and excited their countrymen to its cultivation. Among these was Otfroid; he translated the Gospel into German verse. He describes, in strong terms, the difficulties which he had to encounter: "The barbarousness of the German language ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... supernatural themes—such as Klopstock, Milton, or even Dante,—we shall find that in fulness of emotion and depth of imagination he almost surpasses them. And in poetic expression and single beauties he does not stand a whit behind them. The great intellectual wealth of the German language has rarely been revealed to such an extent in any age as in this writer. His power of imagery flowed from an inexhaustible fountain." His last words declared the inward life of the man, "O Lord of Sabaoth save me according to thy pleasure! O thou crucified Lord Jesus ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... with Germany, on the other hand, is complete envelopment in the warm embrace of the "good German brotherhood"—the gradual substitution of the German language for the Dutch, and a Germanization of such colonies as the Allies may still leave for Holland, frequent State visits from Kaisers, and the subordination of Dutch mercantile interests to those of Hamburg and Altona and (Germanized) Antwerp. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... more remarkable for boldness and singularity of assertion, than for depth. In his Rimljani slavenstvovavshii, Buda 1818, he undertakes to derive the entire Latin language from the Slavic. In an earlier work, written 1809, he contends that the German language was a corruption of the Slavic dialects spoken on ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... still left was to speak English. Perhaps they would be familiar with this nearly universal language. But I only knew it, as I did the German language, well enough to read it fluently, not well enough to speak it correctly. Here, however, our overriding need was ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... too, had ordered that the clothes of every man were to be cut from five ells of cloth: how would the Herr Professor like [with these huge limbs of his] if he found there were no breeches for him, on Aristotle's account?' Adieu to Gottsched; most voluminous of men;—who wrote a Grammar of the German Language, which, they say, did good. I remember always his poor Wife with some pathos; who was a fine, graceful, loyal creature, of ten times his intelligence; and did no end of writing and translating and compiling (Addison's CATO, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... he is mine!" she screamed in fury. "He's French, and will grow up to be a Frenchman, knowing no word of your dirty German language; and some day he shall go and help to kill the whole pack of you, to avenge those whom you ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... white marble, erected by the Austrians to commemorate their victory in these waters over the Italian navy in 1866.[9] On the top there is a lion clutching the Italian flag, while on two of the sides there are inscriptions in the German language. One of them, some feet in length, relates that this memorial is placed there for the officers and men who on July 20, 1866, gave their lives in the service of their Emperor and country. The Italians screwed two marble slabs across the upper and the lower parts of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... in one very important respect the Germans may rightly claim that they are actually ruling the European world. German Princes are actually seated on almost every throne of Europe. The French language may still be the language of diplomacy, but the German language, which was still a despised lingo to Frederick the Great, has become the language of European royalties. Germany for two hundred years has done a most thriving and most lucrative export trade in princelings. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... The German language became one of the interests of the Clemens home during the early months of 1878. The Clemenses had long looked forward to a sojourn in Europe, and the demand for another Mark Twain book of travel furnished an added reason for their ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the frequency with which the excellence of Germany is asserted against Italian sneers. The following specimen will illustrate this point, and also explain Erasmus' epithets. In the chapter on the German language (ii. 30) Irenicus is throughout engaged in refuting the charge of German barbarism. 'It may be true', he says, 'that German is not so much declined as Latin: but complexity does not necessarily bring refinement. Germany is as ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... be thought, perhaps, that remarks which were meant to apply to the German language would have but little bearing upon one so different from it as English. This would be a just objection if Schopenhauer treated literature in a petty spirit, and confined himself to pedantic inquiries into matters of grammar and etymology, or mere niceties ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 1514, Vassili, entering into a treaty with Maximilian, the Emperor of Germany, laid aside the title of grand prince and assumed for himself that of emperor, which was Kayser in the German language and Tzar in the Russian. With great energy Vassili pushed the work of concentrating and extending his empire, every year strengthening his power over the distant principalities. Bajazet II., the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... contend with so great difficulties as we have overcome by the help of God. As the English language is the language of our fortunate country, the untiring endeavors of our fathers to retain the knowledge of the German language among the youth were futile. Many who spoke German were not able to read this language. The consequences of this state of affairs were pitiable. The religious books of the parents were of no use, and in many cases true piety was gradually lost as well as the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... not speak her thought, for the import of her news had sent her patient into one of his deep spells of concentration. No Englishman that she had ever met had spoken the German language so fluently. But concealing her interest and curiosity when he turned toward her again, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... did not hear her. On returning home she ran to her room, and drew the letter out of her glove: it was not sealed. Lizaveta read it. The letter contained a declaration of love; it was tender, respectful, and copied word for word from a German novel. But Lizaveta did not know anything of the German language, and she was ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... is, however, pretty clear that he was not a Pomeranian, as he says he was in Silesia in his youth, and mentions relations scattered far and wide, not only at Hamburg and Cologne, but even at Antwerp; above all, his South-German language betrays a foreign origin, and he makes use of words, which are, I believe, peculiar to Swabia. He must, however, have been living for a long time in Pomerania at the time he wrote, as he even more frequently ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... refrain from firing; and the incident proves that at any rate there were some among the Germans who would do the honourable thing. When the Battalion was at Ypres about a year afterwards a letter came saying that the graves of the two men had been found with an appropriate inscription in the German language. ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... of the German language is also a remarkable phenomenon. The common will is to abandon it. Unfortunately, the Czech language is of limited use, but there is now a remarkable passion for learning English, and there are thousands of students at the University classes. This boom is due to President Wilson. The ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... monuments, that a standard of the form of the Labarum was used by various barbarous nations long before it was adopted by their Roman conquerors, and he is of opinion that its name also was borrowed from either Teutonic Germany, or Celtic Gaul, or Sclavonic Illyria. It is certain that either the German language or the Welsh may afford at this day a perfectly satisfactory etymon: Lap-heer in the former and Lab-hair in the latter, having precisely the same meaning— ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the custom in German elementary schools to include independent study periods in the daily program. More than that, the German language does not even permit children to be spoken of as studying. Children are recognized as being able to learn (lernen); but the foreigner, who, in learning German, happens to use the word studiren (study) in reference ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... resolute patriotism of the Germans, found interpreters of genius in the persons of Arndt and Koerner, the latter of whom laid down his life for the people whom he loved so well. During the Napoleonic period all their compositions, many of which will live so long as the German language lasts, strike the same note—the determination of Germans ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... which deeply afflicts me, and which I cannot but deem highly pernicious, is gaining ground everywhere. It has even now infected the ladies and gentlemen of the court. And having often heard your majesty, in conversation with her majesty the queen, contrary to etiquette, use the vulgar German language instead of the French tongue, which is the language of the courts throughout Germany, they believe they have a perfect right to speak German whenever they please. Yes, it has become a regular custom among them to salute ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... extraordinary collection of books. They were seven, and how they got there nobody knows. The most important in the collection was, in Mrs. Brackett's estimation, an odd volume of an encyclopedia, bound in tree-calf and labeled, "Safety-lamps to Stranglers." Next were four fat tomes in the German language on scientific subjects; these, provided that anybody had ever wanted to read them, had never succeeded in getting themselves read, but they had cuts and cuts which were fascinating to surmise about. The sixth book was the second volume of a romance called "The Headsman," by "the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... Hoellenthal, or Valley of Hell, a deep and romantic gorge which lies beyond. The students enjoyed the scenery, and those who were disposed, walked for miles up the long hills, to the great satisfaction of the driver. The students of the German language had abundant opportunities to practise their gutturals, and none but sufferers know what a pleasure it is to have a genuine native understand ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... "America" was not written with reference to any special occasion. A friend (Mr. Lowell Mason) put into my hands a quantity of music books in the German language early in the year 1832—because, as he said, I could read them and he couldn't—with the request that I would translate any of the hymns and songs which struck my fancy, or, neglecting the German words, with hymns or songs ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Russia—homogeneous in language, administration and religion. With such ideas and aspirations he could hardly remain permanently in cordial agreement with his father, who, though a good patriot according to his lights, had strong German sympathies, often used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations and eccentricities of the Slavophils and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-German War, when the tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the cesarevich did ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... again became ill, and died in that city on October 29. The loss fell so heavily upon Longfellow that he could not speak nor write of it. However, he disciplined himself to work and spent several months at Heidelberg, gaining a fuller knowledge of the German language and literature. In this city he met for the first time the poet Bryant. After traveling in Switzerland he returned to America late ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... Besides the commoner enamelling processes, some of the more important special branches of the business, such as cloisonne work are dealt with. The work is well got up, and the illustrations of apparatus are well executed. The translator is evidently a man well acquainted both with the German language and the subject-matter ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... reconstruct what I had written. I was at work on this—to which I hope to return shortly—when Dr. Krause's' "Erasmus Darwin," with its preliminary notice by Mr. Charles Darwin, came out, and having been compelled, as I have shown above, by Dr. Krause's work to look a little into the German language, the opportunity seemed favourable for going on with it and becoming acquainted with Professor Hering's lecture. I therefore began to translate his lecture at once, with the kind assistance of friends whose patience seemed inexhaustible, and ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... of seven my uncle placed me in a private school in which one of the so-called redeemed sub-sailors was a teacher of the German language. As I look back now, in the light of my present knowledge, I better comprehend the docile humility and carefully nurtured ignorance of this man. In his class rooms he used as a text a description of German life, taken from the captured submarine. From this book he had secured his own ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the poem may serve to illustrate the strophic form and scansion, and at the same time will give the reader an idea of the Middle High German language in ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... father—Cant, that being a Scotch name, and still to be found in Scotland. But Immanuel, though he always cherished his Scotch descent, substituted a K for a C, in order to adapt it better to the analogies of the German language.] the second of six children, was born at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, a city at that time containing about fifty thousand inhabitants, on the 22d of April, 1724. His parents were people of humble rank, and not rich even for their own station, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... years. She learned to knit, to spin, and to sew, and she assisted the minister's wife very much in these and similar occupations. She had learned to read in her native tongue at the clerk's school, but now she conceived the idea of learning the German language. She devoted herself to this task with great assiduity and success, and as soon as she had made such progress as to be able to read in that language, she spent all her leisure time in perusing the German books which she found in ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... Swiss, who, notwithstanding the admirable collection of oaths possessed by the German language, had acquired a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... half humanity in a degrading state of slavery, and attribute all the sins of civilisation to the enforced ignorance and helplessness of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost beyond the German language to express, eloquently as they use it. They demand equality of education and opportunity, but they do not want to be men. Far be such a desire from their minds. They mean to be something much better. To what a pass have men brought the world, they ask? How much better would manners ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... we younger children were left to spend the summer in the house of Herr Minckwitz, a member of either the Municipal or the Saxon Government—I have forgotten which. It was hoped that in this way we would acquire some knowledge of the German language and literature. They were the very kindest family imaginable. I shall never forget the unwearied patience of the two daughters. The father and mother, and a shy, thin, student cousin who was living in the flat, were no less kind. Whenever I could get out into the country ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... abolished them, and young Francis-Joseph has melted all the nations together into common bondage, where the promised equality of nationalities is carried out most literally, to be sure, for they are all equally oppressed, and all are equally ruled by absolutist principles and by the German language. And why was that illusory constitution withdrawn? Because it was a lie from the beginning; an impossibility. It was founded on the principle of centralization. It centralized thirteen different nations, which had had no political history in common, except to have groaned under Austrian ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... further, sir—at least for the present; but, sir, this morning I received a letter from my valued friend in the country, in which he speaks in terms of strong admiration (I don't overstate) of your German acquirements. Sir, he says that it would be a thousand pities if your knowledge of the German language should be lost to the world, or even permitted to sleep, and he entreats me to think of some plan by which it may be turned to account. Sir, I am at all times willing, if possible, to oblige my worthy friend, and likewise to encourage merit and talent; I have, therefore, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... make a "Schweitzer child" of me, dressed me in clothes modelled after those which grandma wore when she was small, and by verse and legend filled my thoughts with pictures of their Alpine country. I liked the German language, learned it rapidly and soon could help to translate orders. Those which pleased grandma best were from the homes of Mr. Jacob Leese, Captain Fitch, Major Prudon, and General Vallejo; for their patronage influenced ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... after a most painstaking and careful examination at the College of Surgeons, that a mistake in comprehending a phrase was actually made by the translator, upon whose accuracy and acquaintance with the German language dependence seemed secure. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Fillmore, Cass, Franklin, Gosper, Jefferson, Pawnee, and Wayne Counties the instruction is given entirely in the German language. In about 200 of the schools three hours daily is devoted to instruction in ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... about to leave he once more impressed on Louie the nature of his call. "Now, Mr. Seigerman," said Baughman, using the German language during the parting conversation, "let me have your answer at the earliest possible moment, for we want to begin an active canvass at once. This is a large county, and to enlist our friends in your behalf no time should be lost." With a profusion of "Leben Sie wohls" and well wishes ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... appreciation of the early Renaissance, especially in sculpture; he was passionately in love with the natural beauties of Italy, from North to South, and he had a kind of national- psychological gift of singling out peculiarly French, Italian or German traits. He did not know the German language, but he was at home in German music, and had studied a great deal of German literature in translation; just then he was reading Hegel's "Aesthetics," the abstractions in which veritably alarmed him, and to which he very much preferred modern ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... all we must read the books that form the intellectual tools of our trade, and there is no profession and hardly a handicraft that does not possess its literature. For instance, there are more than ten periodicals in the German language alone devoted exclusively to such a narrow field as beekeeping. Such periodicals and such books we do not call literature, any more than we do the labors of the man or woman who supplies the text for ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... the attitude of these earlier criticisms would forecast. In the "Ideen zur Geschichte und Kritik der Poesie und bildenden Knste," 1794-96, he states with a burst of enthusiasm over the adaptability of the German language that he regards imitation as no just reproach, for thereby has ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... An unforeseen event has, in like manner, deprived me of the expected cooperation of Prof. Lyman Coleman, now of Nassau Hall College in N. J., in concert with whom this work was planned, and was to have been executed, and on whose ripe scholarship, and familiarity with the German language and literature, I chiefly relied for its ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... man on the road who found time to learn the German language. And, by the way, he told me how it once ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... the biography, shows that he has by no means exhausted the German authorities which may be profitably used in writing upon the early history of Handel: indeed, the author, though of German descent, is unacquainted with the German language. We can learn from them the state of dramatic music at that time in Berlin, Leipsic, Brunswick, Hanover, Koethen; we can form from them some correct idea of the powers of Keiser, Steffani, Graupner, Schieferdecker, Telemann, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pitched their tents, and encamped for the night. There were Germans, but no German state, and even to-day the German finds his "father-land" wherever the German speech is spoken. The Polish, Sclavonian, Hungarian, Illyrian, Italian, and other provinces held by German states, in which the German language is not the mother-tongue, are excluded from the Germanic Confederation. The Turks, or Osmanlis, are a race, not a state, and are encamped, not settled, on the site of the Eastern Roman ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... passionate sort,—the Byronic despair, the Wertherian despondency, the mocking bitterness of Mephistopheles of Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the character of the hero; for our youth had just been learning the German language, and imitated, as almost all clever lads do, his favourite poets and writers. Passages in the volumes once so loved, and now read so seldom, still bear the mark of the pencil with which he noted them in those days. Tears fell upon the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at Northampton that he was reproached for any grave offences, though he may have wandered beyond the prescribed boundaries now and then, and studied according to his inclinations rather than by rule. While at that school he made one acquisition much less common then than now,—a knowledge of the German language and some degree of acquaintance with its literature, under the guidance of one of the few thorough German scholars this country ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... boys in Italy sing clearly, and often with great ability, their national songs, so well suited to the voice, and in their most beautiful language, our northern voices, which are obliged to contend with the great difficulties of the German language, are sacrificed in the most cold-blooded and self-satisfied manner in the schools and singing societies, while all artistic preparation, by which alone the voice may be ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... places speak a dialect of the German language, as I learned from a German servant who accompanied me on my travels; for he conversed with them, and they understood each other tolerably well, just as a native of Friuli in the Popes dominions might understand a Florentine[23]. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... without community of language nationality is imperfect, shows itself in another shape. One main object of modern policy is to bring these exceptional districts under the general rule by spreading the German language in them. Everywhere, in short, wherever a power is supposed to be founded on nationality, the common feeling of mankind instinctively takes language as the test of nationality. We assume language as the test of a nation, without going into any minute questions as to the physical purity ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among the damned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, and who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing, who almost created the German language—all gone! All suffering the wrath of God tonight, and every time an angel thinks of one of those men he gives ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... this "far east," but his legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for "people" was "thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore called the German language the "lingua theotisca" or the "lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect" and this word "teutisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... an expression constantly employed by devoted royalists and imperialists in Germany. It was first used by Frederick William IV, who, in the jargon which in his time passed for the German language, exclaimed: "Ich werde meine Souvereinetat stabilizieren wie ein ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... by faith, and what I mean by intellect. It was not that Luther was without intellect. He was less subtle, less learned, than Erasmus; but in mother wit, in elasticity, in force, and imaginative power, he was as able a man as ever lived. Luther created the German language as an instrument of literature. His translation of the Bible is as rich and grand as our own, and his table talk as full of matter ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude |
