Thomas Bernhard Quotes & Sayings

It's a folk art of sorts, I said to Hoeller, always longing to kill oneself but being kept by one's watchful intelligence from killing oneself, so that the condition is stabilized in the form of lifelong controlled suffering, it's an art possessed only by this people and those belonging to it. — Thomas Bernhard

Wertheimer was afraid of losing his unhappiness and killed himself for this and no other reason, I thought, with — Thomas Bernhard

Time destroys everything we do, whatever it is. — Thomas Bernhard

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. Next — Thomas Bernhard

We fill our mental strong-room with these great minds and old masters and resort to them at the crucial moment in our lives; — Thomas Bernhard

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. — Thomas Bernhard

My dear loser, Glenn greeted Wertheimer, with his Canadian-American cold-bloodedness he always called him the loser, he called me quite dryly the philosopher, which didn't bother me. Wertheimer, the loser, was for Glenn always busy losing, constantly losing out, whereas Glenn noticed I had the word philosopher in my mouth at all times and probably with sickening regularity, and so quite naturally we were for him the loser and the philosopher, I said to myself upon entering the inn. The loser and the philosopher went to America to see Glenn the piano virtuoso again, for no other reason. And — Thomas Bernhard

Everything about everybody is nothing but diversion from death. — Thomas Bernhard

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. — 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. — Thomas Bernhard

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work. — Thomas Bernhard

But instead of thinking about my book and how to write it, as I go pacing the floor, I fall to counting my footsteps until I feel about to go mad. — Thomas Bernhard

Man is a wretched creature and death is a certainty - Thomas Bernhard — Thomas Bernhard

But simple people don't understand complicated ones and thrust the latter back on themselves, more ruthlessly than any others, I thought. The biggest mistake is to think that one can be rescued by so-called simple people. A person goes to them in an extremely needy condition and begs desperately to be rescued and they thrust this person even more deeply into his own despair. And how are they supposed to save the extravagant one in his extravagance, I thought. Wertheimer — Thomas Bernhard

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together. — Thomas Bernhard

I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably. — Thomas Bernhard

What can you do. You get a name, you're called 'Thomas Bernhard', and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it. — Thomas Bernhard

Nothing but disaster follows from applause. — Thomas Bernhard

Because in the end nothing matters all that much, as he also wrote on another slip, and on his last slip he'd written, it's all the same. — Thomas Bernhard

Nature, not yet polluted by human beings, hence his early rising. — Thomas Bernhard

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable. — Thomas Bernhard

All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way. — Thomas Bernhard

If that handsome fellow were a cripple he wouldn't repel me, but he isn't a cripple, he is that handsome fellow, so he repels me ... — Thomas Bernhard

We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death. — Thomas Bernhard

People seek the society of others who are exciting, disconcerting and volatile, who are never the same from one moment to the next and usually change complexion completely. — Thomas Bernhard

When we think, we know nothing, everything is open, nothing, so Roithamer. — Thomas Bernhard

When we meet the very best, we have to give up, I thought. — Thomas Bernhard

Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think. — Thomas Bernhard

We run away from one thing into the other and destroy ourselves in the process, he said. We just simply go away until we have given up, so he said. Preference — Thomas Bernhard

Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought. — 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. — Thomas Bernhard

People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other. — Thomas Bernhard

Lawyers make nothing but confusion ... A lawyer is an instrument of the devil. In general, he's a fiendish idiot, banking on the stupidity of people much more stupid than himself, and by God he's always right. — Thomas Bernhard

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 — Thomas Bernhard

I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favour of dogs. — Thomas Bernhard

The loser was a born loser, I thought, he has always been the loser and if we observe the people around us carefully we notice that these people consist almost entirely of losers like him, I said to myself, of — Thomas Bernhard

But I've always been a genius of secrecy, I thought, quite unlike Wertheimer who basically couldn't keep anything a secret, had to talk about everything, had to get everything out in the open as long as he lived. But naturally unlike most others we were lucky not to have to earn a cent because we had enough from the very beginning. Whereas — Thomas Bernhard

Then he had kept himself to himself, "in the way you might stick by a tree, which might be rotten, but at least it's a tree," and heart and understanding had been dismissed, pushed into the background. — Thomas Bernhard

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood. — Thomas Bernhard

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money ... — Thomas Bernhard

The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled; but this morbid fear must not lead us to conceal the facts and so to falsify the whole of human history
which is of course part of natural history
and pass it on in falsified form just because it is customary to do so, when we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form. — Thomas Bernhard

We ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on ... We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide's life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide's existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide. — Thomas Bernhard

In every area of life there's nothing but chaos. Wherever we turn there's chaos, in the sciences there's chaos, in politics, it's chaos, whatever we do, it's all chaotic, wherever we look, purely chaotic conditions, chaotic conditions are all we ever have to deal with. Because everything is being done precipitately, in a rush. In such a time of precipitateness and overhastiness and the consequent chaotic conditions a thinking man should never act precipitately or overhastily in anything that concerns him, but every single one of us constantly acts precipitately, overhastily, in every way. — Thomas Bernhard

Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren't the way we've pictured them and that we absolutely don't belong with them, as we've talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at their table and believing we belonged with them or we could sit with them for even the shortest time without being punished, which is the biggest mistake, I thought. All our lives we yearn to be with these people and want to reach out to them and when we realize what we feel for them are rejected by them and indeed in the most brutal fashion. — Thomas Bernhard

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost. — Thomas Bernhard

She herself had never had enough money and never enough time and hadn't even been unhappy once, in contrast to those she called refined gentlemen, who always had enough money and enough time and constantly talked about their unhappiness. She — Thomas Bernhard

Then she wanted to know more about the funeral, but I didn't know what else to report, I had already said everything about Wertheimer's funeral, more or less everything. Was it a Jewish funeral, the innkeeper wanted to know. I said, no, no Jewish funeral, he was buried the fastest way possible, I said, everything went so fast I almost missed it. The — Thomas Bernhard

All schools are bad and the one we attend is always the worst if it doesn't open our eyes. What — Thomas Bernhard

He abhorred people who said things that hadn't been thought through, thus he abhorred almost all mankind. — Thomas Bernhard

Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing. — Thomas Bernhard

When we do something, we may not think about why we are doing what we are doing, says Oehler, for then it would suddenly be totally impossible for us to do anything. — Thomas Bernhard

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody. — Thomas Bernhard

Weng lies in a hollow, buried among blocks of ice for millions of years. The roadsides favor promiscuity. — Thomas Bernhard

All my tendencies are deadly ones, he once said to me, everything in me has a deadly tendency to it, it's in my genes, as Wertheimer said, I thought. He always read books that were obsessed with suicide, with disease and death, I thought while standing in the inn, books that described human misery, the hopeless, meaningless, senseless world in which everything is always devastating and deadly. That's why he especially loved Dostoevsky and all his disciples, Russian literature in general, because it actually is a deadly literature, but also the depressing French philosophers. — Thomas Bernhard

The empty rooms always had a terribly depressing effect upon my father when he considered, he said, that the person who dwelt in them had to fill them solely with his own fantasies, with fantastic objects, in order not to go out of his mind. — Thomas Bernhard

It is not just Gould's playing but the fact that he stopped playing, turned his back on the world, that fascinated Bernhard. It — Thomas Bernhard

I enter into a book and settle in it, neck and crop, you should realize, in one or two pages of a philosophical essay as if I were entering a landscape, a piece of nature, a state organism, a detail of the earth, if you like, in order to penetrate into it entirely and not just with half my strength or half-heartedly, in order to explore it and then, having explored it with all the thoroughness at my disposal, drawing conclusions as to the whole. — Thomas Bernhard

Every person is a unique and autonomous person and actually, considered independently, the greatest artwork of all time ... — Thomas Bernhard

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony. — Thomas Bernhard

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous — Thomas Bernhard

Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt
an attempt that seems touching even to our intellect
to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hyprocrisy and self-deception, Reger said. These pictures are full of lies and falsehoods and full of hypocrisy and self-deception, there is nothing else in them if we disregard their often inspired artistry. All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man's absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. That is what all these pictures express, this helplessness which, on the one hand, embarasses the intellect and, on the other hand, bewilders the same intellect and moves it to tears, Reger said. — Thomas Bernhard

We study better in hostile surroundings than in hospitable ones, a student is always well advised to choose a hostile place of study rather than a hospitable one, for the hospitable place will rob him of the better part of his concentration for his studies, the hostile place on the other hand will allow him total concentration, since he must concentrate on his studies to avoid despairing, — Thomas Bernhard

What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell the truth and write the truth, even though it never can be the truth and never is the truth. — Thomas Bernhard

We even understand a philosophical essay better if we do not gobble it up entirely and at one go, but pick out a detail from which we then arrive at the whole, if we are lucky. Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and perfect are basically abhorrent to us. Only when we are fortunate enough to turn something whole, something complete or indeed perfect into a fragment, when we get down to reading it, only then do we experience a high degree, at times indeed a supreme degree, of pleasure in it. — Thomas Bernhard

We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid. — Thomas Bernhard

People are always talking about it being their duty to find their way to their fellow men - to their neighbour, as they are forever saying with all the baseness of false sentiment - when in fact it is purely and simply a question of finding their way to themselves. Let each first find his way to himself! And since hardly anyone has yet found his way to himself, it is inconceivable that any of these unfortunate millions has ever found his way to another human being - or to his neighbour, as they say, dripping with self-deception. — Thomas Bernhard

But of course it was precisely this destruction process of my beloved Steinway that I had wanted. — Thomas Bernhard

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad. — Thomas Bernhard

The essential elements of a person come to light only when we must regard him as lost to us, when everything he has done seems to have been a taking leave of us. Suddenly the true nature of everything about him that was merely preparation for his ultimate death becomes truly visible. — Thomas Bernhard

After my parents were dead, I found in a box and in two chests of drawers nothing but hundreds of bright red Alpine caps, I said, nothing but bright red Alpine stockings. Every one of them knitted by my mother. My parents could have gone into the High Alps with these bright red caps and bright red stockings for thousands of years. I burnt every one of those bright red caps and bright red stockings, I said. I put on one of my mother's hundreds of bright red Alpine caps and in this costume burnt all the others, laughing, laughing, continuously laughing, I said.
(Goethe Dies, p.65) — Thomas Bernhard

The whole process of life is a process of deterioration in which everything - and this is the most cruel law - continually gets worse. — Thomas Bernhard

We have always preferred to be operated on by the assistants of famous surgeons who are also always famous medical professors, and not by those surgeons and professors themselves. — Thomas Bernhard

Unfulfilled Wish
A woman in Atzbach was murdered by her husband because, in his opinion, she had carried the wrong child with her to safety from their burning house. She had not saved their eight-year old son, for whom the man had special plans, but had saved their daughter, who was not loved by the husband. When the husband was asked, in the District Court in Wels, what plans he had had for his son, who had been completely consumed by the fire, the husband replied that he had intended him to be an anarchist and a mass murderer of dictatorships and thus a destroyer of the state. — Thomas Bernhard

Only with people and among people do we stand a chance of and among people do we stand a chance of carrying on without going insane. We cannot in fact bear to be alone for very long, Reger said, we believe we can be alone, we believe we can be left on our own, we persuade ourselves that we can manage on our own, Reger said, but this is a chimera. Without people we have not the slightest hope of survival, Reger said, no matter how many great minds and old masters we have taken on as companions, they do not replace a human being — Thomas Bernhard

We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist — Thomas Bernhard

A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty. — Thomas Bernhard

Again and again we try to escape ourselves, but we fail in our efforts, constantly run our heads into the wall because we don't want to recognize that we can't escape ourselves, except in death. Now — Thomas Bernhard

One of the most marvelous things I experienced was that you hold another one's hand in your hand, you feel the pulse, then it becomes slower and slower, then that's it. It's something enormous. Then you still hold that hand, then the nurse comes in, bringing with her the number for the corpse. The nurse wheels her out once more and says: "Come back later." Then you are immediately confronted with life again. You calmly get up and put things in order; in the meantime the nurse comes back and attaches the number to the corpse, you empty the bedside cabinet, the nurse says: "Don't forget the yogurt, you have to take it too." Outside you hear the crows -- it's like a theatrical play.

Then the bad conscience comes. A dead person leaves you with an immense guilt. — Thomas Bernhard

To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One... Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach. — Thomas Bernhard

Words ruin one's thoughts, paper makes them ridiculous, and even while one is still glad to get something ruined and something ridiculous down on paper, one's memory manages to lose hold of even this ruined and ridiculous something. Paper can turn an enormity into a triviality, an absurdity. If you look at it this way, then whatever appears in the world, by way of the spiritual world so to speak, is always a ruined thing, a ridiculous thing, which means that everything in this world is ridiculous and ruined. Words were made to demean thought, I would even go so far as to state that words exist in order to abolish thought, and one day they will succeed one hundred percent in so doing. In any case, words (are) bringing everything down. Depression derives from words, nothing else. — Thomas Bernhard

I know nothing about nature. I hate nature, because it is killing me. — Thomas Bernhard

And you realize that it was not those great minds and not those old masters which kept you alive for decades but that it was this one single person whom you loved more than anyone else. — Thomas Bernhard

Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned. — Thomas Bernhard

Disappointed Englishman.

Several Englishmen who were inveigled by a mountain guide in eastern Tyrol into climbing the Drei Zinnen with him were so disappointed, after reaching the highest of the three peaks, with what Nature had to offer them on this highest peak that then and there they killed the guide, a family man with three children and, it seems, a deaf wife. When, however, they realized what they had actually done, they threw themselves off the peak, one after the other. After this, a newspaper in Birmingham wrote that Birmingham had lost its most outstanding newspaper publisher, its most extraordinary bank director, and its most able undertaker. — Thomas Bernhard

I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself ... — Thomas Bernhard

In the end we remember all the students we've gone to school with and invite them to our homes only to find out that we no longer have the least thing in common with them, I thought. — Thomas Bernhard

Seen from across the street, he was like someone to whom the world had long since given notice to quit but who was compelled to stay in it, no longer belonging to it, but unable to leave it. — Thomas Bernhard

Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent. — Thomas Bernhard

Reading is still the most bearable of all forms of disgust. — Thomas Bernhard

Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death. — Thomas Bernhard

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. — Thomas Bernhard

myself. We constantly portray and judge people only in false terms, we judge them unjustly and portray them meanly, I said to myself, in every instance, no matter how we portray, no matter how we judge them. Such — Thomas Bernhard

The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite. — Thomas Bernhard

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents. — Thomas Bernhard

After all, there is nothing but failure. — Thomas Bernhard

We always look for everything in the immediate proximity, that is a mistake. — Thomas Bernhard

Whoever can't laugh doesn't deserve to be taken seriously... — Thomas Bernhard

Hotel Waldhaus
We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even ruined Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them. — Thomas Bernhard

Everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death — Thomas Bernhard

With its population made up of two categories of people, those who do business and those upon whom they prey, the city has only a painful life to offer the young person who goes there to learn and to study; for sooner or later anyone who lives there, whatever his constitution, becomes disturbed and is eventually deranged and destroyed by the city, often in the most deadly and insidious manner. — Thomas Bernhard