Metropolis Quotes

“The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“This book is not of today or of the future.
It tells of no place.
It serves no cause, party or class.
It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding:
“The mediator between brain and muscle must be the Heart.”
—T. vH.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“Du hast vergessen, daß Liebende heilig sind. Auch wenn sie sich irren, Joh; selbst ihr Irrtum ist heilig. Auch wenn sie Narren sind, Joh; selbst ihre Narrheit ist heilig. Denn wo Liebende sind, ist der Garten Gottes, und niemand hat das Recht, sie daraus zu vertreiben. Nicht einmal Gott.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“Beautiful Maria, how Sweet are your hips... Is the man whom you love never to find that out? Beautiful Maria, listen to what I say to you: only a little to one side of this way, a flight of stairs leads steeply upward, leading to freedom... Your knees are trembling... how sweet that is! Do you think to overcome your weakness by clasping your hands? You call upon God, but believe me: God does not hear you! Since I came upon the earth as the great flood, to destroy all in existence but Noah’s ark, God has been deaf to the scream of His creatures.  Or did you think I had forgotten how the mothers screamed then? Have you more responsibility on your conscience than God on His? Turn back, beautiful Maria, turn back!”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“The New Tower of Babel and its fellow houses stretched their somber heights high above the cathedral spire, that the young girls in the work-rooms and wireless stations gazed down just as deep from the thirtieth story windows on the star-crowned virgin as she, in earlier days, had looked down on the pious red roofs.  In place of doves, flying machines swarmed over the cathedral roof and over the city, resting on the roofs, from which, at night glaring pillars and circles indicated the course of flight and landing points. The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more than once, having the cathedral pulled down, as being pointless and an obstruction to the traffic in the town of fifty million inhabitants. But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was Desertus, half monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the solemn oath: If one hand from the wicked city of Metropolis were to dare to touch just one stone of the cathedral, then they would neither repose nor rest until the wicked city of Metropolis should lie, a heap of ruins, at the foot of her cathedral.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“Did he not live in a town which lay deeper under the earth than the underground stations of Metropolis, with their thousand shafts—In a town the houses of which storied just as high above squares and streets as, above in the night, did the houses of Metropolis, which towered so high, one above the other? Had he ever known anything else than the horrible sobriety of these houses, in which there lived not men, but numbers, recognisable only by the enormous placards by the house-doors? Had his life ever had any purpose other than to go out from these doors, framed with numbers, out to work, when the sirens of Metropolis howled for him—and ten hours later, crushed and tired to death, to stumble into the house by the door of which his number stood? Was he, himself, anything but a number—number 11811—crammed into his linen, his clothes, his cap? Had not the number also become imprinted into his soul, into his brain, into his blood, that he must even stop and think of his own name?”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“And then he grasped that this city of machines, this city of sobriety, this fanatic for work, sought, at night, the mighty counterpoise to the frenzy of the day’s work—that this city, at night, lost itself, as one insane, as one entirely witless, in the intoxication of a pleasure, which, flinging up to all heights, hurtling down to all depths, was boundlessly blissful and boundlessly destructive”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“THERE WAS A HOUSE in the great Metropolis which was older than the town.  Many said that it was older, even, than the cathedral, and, before the Archangel Michael raised his voice as advocate in the conflict for God, the house stood there in its evil gloom, defying the cathedral from out its dull eyes. It had lived through the time of smoke and soot.  Every year which passed over the city seemed to creep, when dying, into this house, so that, at last it was a cemetery—a coffin, filled with dead tens of years. Set into the black wood of the door stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram. It was said that a magician, who came from the East (and in the track of whom the plague wandered) had built the house in seven nights.  But the masons and carpenters of the town did not know who had mortared the bricks, nor who had erected the roof.  No foreman’s speech and no ribboned nosegay had hallowed the Builder’s Feast after the pious custom.  The chronicles of the town held no record of when the magician died nor of how he died.  One day it occurred to the citizens as odd that the red shoes of the magician had so long shunned the abominable plaster of the town.  Entrance was forced into the house and not a living soul was found inside.  But the rooms, which received, neither by day nor by night, a ray from the great lights of the sky, seemed to be waiting for their master, sunken in sleep.  Parchments and folios lay about, open, under a covering of dust, like silver-grey velvet.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“I have no friends, Josaphat.” Josaphat wanted to contradict, but he stopped himself.  Freder turned his eyes towards him.  He straightened himself up and smiled—the other’s hand still in his. “I have no friends, Josaphat, and, what weighs still more, I have no friend.  I had play-fellows-sport-fellows—but friends? A friend? No, Josaphat! Can one confide oneself to somebody of whom one knows nothing but how his laughter sounds?” He saw the eyes of the other fixed upon him, discerned the ardour in them and the pain and the truth. “Yes,” he said with a worried smile.  “I should like to confide myself to you... I must confide myself to you, Josaphat... I must call you ‘Friend’ and ‘Brother’... for I need a man who will go with me in trust and confidence to the world’s end.  Will you be that man?” “Yes.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“Then came a time which pulled down antiquities.  Then the words were spoken: The house must die.  But the house was stronger than the words, as it was stronger than the centuries.  With suddenly falling stones it slew those who laid hands on its walls.  It opened the floor under their feet, dragging them down into a shaft, of which no man had previously had any knowledge.  It was as though the plague, which had formerly wandered in the wake of the red shoes of the magician, still crouched in the corners of the narrow house, springing out at men from behind, to seize them by the neck.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“Oh yes, Joh—oh yes! Your sin walks behind you like a good dog on the trail.  It does not lose your scent, Joh—it remains always and always at your back.  A friend is unarmed against his friend.  He has no shield before his breast, nor armor before his heart.  A friend who believes in his friend is a defenseless man.  A defenseless man was it whom you betrayed, Joh.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“But I do, Joh! I still remember every syllable.  You said: ‘I don’t hear a word you say—! only hear Hel! If I were to be blinded—! should still see Hel! If I were to be paralyzed—with paralyzed feet, I should still find my way to Hel!—’ Freder is your son.  What do you think, Joh, he would answer me were I to say to him: give up the girl you love... ?” Joh Fredersen was silent. “Take care, Joh,” said the old mother.  “I know what it means when your eyes grow cold, as now, and when you grow as pale as one of the stones of the wall.  You have forgotten that lovers are sacred.  Even if they are mistaken, Joh, their mistake itself is sacred.  Even if they are fools, Joh, their folly itself is sacred.  For where lovers are, there is God’s garden, and no one has the right to drive them out Not even God.  Only their own sin.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“You have suffered,” thought his dream-filled brain.  “You have been redeemed by suffering.  You have attained to bliss... Is it worth while to suffer?-Yes.” And he walked out of the cathedral on feet which were still as though dead, tentatively, he stepped through the mighty door-way, stood dazzled in the light and swayed as though drunken. For the wine of suffering which he had drunk, was very heavy, and intoxicating, and white-hot. His soul spoke within him as he reeled along: “I will go home and look for my mother.”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis

“That Brain and Hands no longer understand each other will one day destroy the New Tower of Babel. “Brain and Hands need a mediator. The Mediator between Brain and Hands must be the Heart. . . .”
― Thea von Harbou, Metropolis