161 Quotes by Thomas Bernhard

It is not necessary to read all of Goethe or all of Kant, it is not necessary to read all of Schopenhauer; a few pages of Werther, a few pages of Elective Affinities and we know more in the end about the two books than if we had read them from beginning to end, which would anyway deprive us of the purest enjoyment.

For a long time we see only one side of a person’s personality, because for reasons of self-preservation we do not wish to see any other, I thought, then suddenly we see all sides of their personality and are disgusted by them, I thought.

On the one hand we can’t be alone, people like us; on the other we can’t stand company. We can’t stand male company, which bores us to death, or female company either. I gave up male company for years because it’s totally unprofitable, and female company gets on my nerves in no time.

I doubted whether this work was truly worth something and was thinking of destroying it upon my return, everything we write down, if we leave it for a while and start reading it from the beginning, naturally becomes unbearable and we won’t rest until we’ve destroyed it again, I thought.

We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,′ the prince said, ’is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous.

One day you’re cut off, at the very start you’re cut off and can’t go back, the language you learn and the whole business of walking and all the rest is for the sake of the single thought, how to get back again.

To our horror, the very neighbor whom we had for decades thought of as the best natured and hardest working and, we always thought, the most contented of all our neighbors has turned out to be a murderer.

Arrogance is an utterly appropriate weapon to use against a hostile world, a world in which arrogance is feared and respected, even if, like mine, it’s only feigned.