Bernhard Quotes & Sayings
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Top Bernhard Quotes
I've always loved being at the eye of the storm creatively with people that I find exciting and glamorous. So sometimes I got sidetracked in my career and maybe I would have done more TV or film. — Sandra Bernhard
Wherever we play golf, people come out here to get autographs. They obviously come out to watch us play and see us in action, but they also want to interact with us. — Bernhard Langer
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
I really, really love Hilary Clinton. I think she's very cool. She's out there and she's involved. — Sandra Bernhard
But then she was not awkward, she was slow-flowing, graceful, seductive - a seductiveness that had nothing to do with breast and hips and legs, but was an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body — Bernhard Schlink
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. — Thomas Bernhard
For everyone says something repeatedly and is misunderstood, this is the only point where everybody understands everybody else, he said, I thought. One — Thomas Bernhard
The live show is different from the album. It's different every night depending on where I am and how many months have gone by since I last performed. — Sandra 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
I learned early on that if I was to get attention, I would have to be charming. Even the models I've photographed are often like that. Some of them are not beautiful. But, if you catch them in the right light, they glow. — Ruth Bernhard
We have relinquished and abandoned and left behind and forgotten what we believed we had to relinquish, abandon and leave behind and ultimately forget; we have let ourselves go and we have gone away and we have gone under, but we have relinquished nothing and abandoned nothing and left behind nothing and forgotten nothing; we have in reality extinguished nothing whatsoever, because our parents did not inform us of or enlighten us about the fact that our life-process is in reality nothing but a process of illness. We were up above, in the company of our parents, locked up in our walls and in our rooms and in our books and papers and everything around us and in us was nothing but lethal and we are down below, without our parents, again locked up in these walls and in our rooms and in our books and papers and everything around us and in us is nothing but lethal. — Thomas Bernhard
But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one's self-righteousness? — Bernhard Schlink
It's up to the captain. I certainly feel my golf is worthy of playing in the Ryder Cup. But I'm not sure I'm on the radar screen of Paul McGinley. — Bernhard Langer
I would never wanna do a show that's strictly maudlin and invaded my personal life and my home. I would never do that. — Sandra Bernhard
Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe. — Ruth Bernhard
I'm very much an optimist. I don't think I could do my work if I didn't believe there was some kind of hope for humanity. — Sandra Bernhard
I'm an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard's books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work - the pursuit of darkness, the negative - and I think in some sense I've internalised that as what one is supposed to do. — Ben Marcus
I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers. — Bernhard Schlink
Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth. — Thomas Bernhard
And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man regress, should he allow himself to resemble a primitive beast, the louse begins to multiply again and treats man as he deserves, as a brute beast. This conclusion would have endeared itself to the warm heart of Alfred Nobel. My contribution to it makes me feel less unworthy of the honour which you have conferred upon me in his name. — Charles Nicolle
Shaking people up." Finally, art was for both of them not an end in itself but a way of achieving an ascetic renunciation of the world. "Art should be given the chance to phase itself out," Gould — 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
You know how some people complain about the way carriage horses are treated? That they are in a small stall? That is mistreatment. In a holding cell, you get very bored. You have no newspapers, you have no anything. — Bernhard Goetz
Not everybody is cookie-cutter. You just can't be. There are too many variables in life. — Sandra Bernhard
Purim, one of my favorite holidays. It's like the original drag queen's holiday. It's when all the Jewish men go for it and feel no guilt for a change. — Sandra Bernhard
If you want to dig, if you want to pry, do it on your time, but I'm going to be a woman of dignity. — Sandra 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
Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with. — Thomas Bernhard
Tall, black-haired, rouged, Kaiser-moustached, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his little black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand - the 'poseur' absolute. He was said to have slept with Sarah Bernhard and vomited for a week afterwards. — William Sansom
When a body is acted upon by external forces besides its weight it tips over on one side of the base if the (so-called) weight (vector) acts along a line through the so-called center-of-mass that intersects the supporting surface outside the base of the body; in the case of a stable equilibrium, the weight vector points inside the base, in the case of an unstable equilibrium it points exactly toward the tilting edge of the base, "tilting edge of the base" underlined. We always went to far, so Roithamer, so we were always pushing toward the extreme limit. But we never thrust ourselves beyond it. Once I have thrust myself beyond it, it's all over, so Roithamer, "all" underlined. We're always set toward the predetermined moment, "predetermined moment" underlined. When that moment has come, we don't know that it has come, but it is the right moment. We can exist at the heighest degree of intensity as long as we live, so Roithamer (June 7). The end is no process. Clearing. — 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
I was a monster. I don't deny it. I wasn't a monster until a few years ago. But you have to be a monster to survive in New York City. New York City doesn't give a damn about violence. — Bernhard Goetz
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
Coming to a place like Nashville, which is just music music music, it's always been such an influence on me. And there are so many interesting songwriters out there, and it's such a crazy business and so many people are trying to do it, and it's all right there in Nashville. — Sandra 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
When she had fallen asleep on me, and the saw in the yard was quiet, and a blackbird was singing as the colors of things in the kitchen dimmed until nothing remained of them but lighter and darker shades of gray, I was completely happy. — Bernhard Schlink
It seems a perfectly normal thing to be 95. — Ruth 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
We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist — Thomas Bernhard
Unfortunately, most college kids these days aren't coming from any place-they seem to ask the same kind of questions over and over again. — Sandra 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
Competition is healthy. It makes you work harder and strive for more and try to find that extra one or two percent in your game that you could possibly improve. — Bernhard Langer
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
You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life
a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real. — Thomas Bernhard
I always say yes to everything because I always feel that whatever comes my way, life meant for me. — Ruth Bernhard
We had taken him for a Norwegian ship's captain and had come to his table to hear some more about seafaring, not about philosophy, from which, indeed, we had fled north from Central Europe. — Thomas Bernhard
Berg, Sophia may be a Greek name, but that is no reason for you to study your neighbor in a Greek lesson. Translate! — Bernhard Schlink
It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you? — Bernhard Schlink
I believe that we belittle survivors by assuming that they will fail. — Toni Bernhard
Mr. Chamberlain desires to avert the threat to England's peace by making England, in alliance with Germany, stronger than her rivals and so to force them to renounce their hostile intentions against her. — Bernhard Von Bulow
It is better to read twelve lines of a book with the utmost intensity and thus to penetrate into them to the full — Thomas Bernhard
I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying. — Thomas Bernhard
A body needs at least
three points of support,
not in a straight line,
to fix its position,
so Roithamer had written. — Thomas Bernhard
Since the German people, with unparalleled heroism, but also at the cost of fearful sacrifices, has waged war against half the world, it is our right and our duty to obtain safety and independence for ourselves at sea. — Bernhard Von Bulow
If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry. — Ruth 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
Almost everybody we get together with about a matter, even if it is of the highest importance, is incompetent. — Thomas Bernhard
Anyone, any type of story, it doesn't have to be a crime victim, you don't have to let yourself be food for the media. — Bernhard Goetz
Why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? — Bernhard Schlink
At some point, the pride has to be a part of the whole day-to-day oeuvre. It's part of who you are and doesn't need to be discussed anymore. — Sandra Bernhard
All this time I've been talking about the human sciences and don't even know what these human sciences are, don't have the slightest clue, he said, I thought, been talking about philosophy and don't have a clue about philosophy, been talking about existence and don't have a clue about it, he said. Our starting point is always that we don't know anything about anything and don't even have a clue about it, he said, — Thomas Bernhard
She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats. — Bernhard Schlink
I like reading my bible, I like bible studies where I get together with others and talk about the word of God and how it relates to us and how we can change to become more like him. — Bernhard Langer
If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual 20th century. — Ruth Bernhard
To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One... Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach. — Thomas Bernhard
There's this whole sense of judgment and who's right and who's wrong and who's moral and who's going to be punished. — Sandra 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 love performing. I love being a provocateur. I love putting myself in situations that are uncomfortable and that I have to get out of. — Sandra Bernhard
It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person's feeling of self worth, even an opponent's. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation. — Bernhard Haring
I know nothing about nature. I hate nature, because it is killing me. — Thomas Bernhard
I've always been opposed to groups. I can't believe the doctrine of group is going to work for every single person within the group. — Sandra Bernhard
Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame. — Bernhard Schlink
In Globetrotter, David Albahari explores the consciousness of emigres from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, showing that while abroad, many of us are even more intensely preoccupied with our histories than we were while living in Yugoslavia. His narrative structured out of realistic details and perceptions with self-conscious meditation blending history, civilization and its discontents, and personal experience reaches a density and intensity akin to Krasznahorkai's and Thomas Bernhard's. An intensely idiosyncratic narrative, enjoyable and thoughtful. — Josip Novakovich
I've always allowed myself to go on journeys creatively and emotionally, and never put, like, limits on myself. — Sandra Bernhard
In every part of my life, too, I stood outside myself and watched; I saw myself functioning at the university, with my parents and brother and sister and my friends, but inwardly I felt no involvement. — Bernhard Schlink
I like the energy of live performance. — Sandra Bernhard
To me ... San Francisco is an ideal city, intellectually stimulating and naturally beautiful. The oceans and forests are close enough to refresh the spirit; the architecture is always exciting. — Ruth 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
I'm studying Kabbalah, which is really the essence of Jewish spirituality. — Sandra Bernhard
It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude. — Ruth 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
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
Fall in love. Every day. With everything. With life. If you can fall in love, you can be a photographer. I think that is absolutely essential. — Ruth Bernhard
I'm sure that Jesus was an incredible person. — Sandra Bernhard
A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty. — Thomas Bernhard
I love National Geographic. Just when you think you've seen the last lost native tribe, National Geographic will find a new one. — Sandra 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
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again. — Bernhard Schlink
I think there are always different times in your life when you go, "Oh, god. I wish I were traditionally pretty. My life would be so much easier." But then you get through that, and you go, "Well, I'm not." — Sandra Bernhard