161 Quotes by Thomas Bernhard

That he was actually born into a giant fortune, all his life hadn’t had any use for this giant fortune, had always been unhappy with this giant fortune, I thought. That his parents had been unable, as they say, to open his eyes, that they were the ones who depressed the child, I thought.

Reading is still the most bearable of all forms of disgust.

For the thinking person there is no such thing as idleness... By contrast, one might say that the thinking person is at his most active when he is supposedly doing nothing. This is beyond the comprehension of genuinely idle people.

Jede Existenz ist ein Milderungsgrund, geehrter Herr.

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequethed their writings to me – I have no others.

We can exist at the highest degree of intensity for as long as we live.

Io non ho mai avuto un padre e non ho mai avuto una madre, ma ho avuto sempre il mio Montaigne.

But we don’t always have to be studying something, I thought, it’s perfectly enough merely to think, to do nothing but think and give our thoughts free rein. To give in to our philosophical worldview, simply submit to our philosophical worldview, but that’s the hardest thing, I thought. Wertheimer.

But of course the world consists only of absurd ideas.