Hamann Quotes & Sayings

The first time I saw you," I say, "I had a premonition. I had the feeling I'd found the thing I'd always been waiting for. The next time I saw you, it was the same. And every time after it's been the same. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter — Johann Georg Hamann

Boys will be boys, that's what everyone always says. But no one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial. — Isaiah Berlin

Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it. — Johann Georg Hamann

But in fact there are infinite subtleties to identity-that is to say, there is the way that you are, which is the sum of the way you are becoming and the way you have been, which does not take into account the way you secretly wish to be. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa. — Johann Georg Hamann

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it. — Johann Georg Hamann

Mine is not a smiling face. Strangers on the street always say, Smile! But my muscles do not naturally go there. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow. — Johann Georg Hamann

We are spontaneous when we are at our genuine best. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

If she could no longer be called beautiful, she possessed something better-a knowledge of beauty; it's inflated value, it's inevitable loss. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter — Johann Georg Hamann

I could never settle for anything less than a renegade and a runaway, a descendant of greatness capable of voluntary disinheritance. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The sea slapped ominously, confessing its strategic impartiality. The sea is an international sea, and the sky a universal sky. Often we forget that. Often we think that what is verging upon us is ours alone. We forget that there are other sides entirely. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it. — Johann Georg Hamann

Lying is a full time occupation, even if you tell just one, because once you tell it, you're stuck with it. If you want to do it right, you have to visualize it, conjure the graphics, tone, and sequence of action, then relate it purposefully in the midst of seemingly spontaneous dialogue. The more actual the lie becomes to the listener, the more actual it becomes to the teller, which is scariest of all. Some people really get to believing their own lies. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

It was then that I began to write. Writing helps when you can't talk to your friends; it wasn't that my friends were untrustworthy, it's just that I would never discuss something that was hardly real as though it were really real. Often people do this, forcing friends into authenticating an imaginary life. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Mr. O'Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. "Ms. Auerbach! What will it be today? Camus? Cervantes?" "Actually I'm looking for a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson"
He paused somberly, toying with the twirled tip of his mustache. No matter how seriously librarians are engaged in their work, they are always glad to be interrupted when the theme is books. It makes no difference to them how simple the search is or how behind on time either of you might be running - they consider all queries scrupulously. They love to have their knowledge tested. They lie in wait, they will not be rushed. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Kate lost a mother," I said, "but I lost a nothing."
Kate doesn't feel that way," Jack assured me.
But what about everybody else besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what she was when she and I had no name? People need names for everything. I wasn't a relative or a friend, I was just an object of her kindness."
He wiped my cheeks, saying Ssshh. I buried my face in his shoulder.
True kindness is stabilizing," I went on. "When you feel it and when you express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. Like all there is to achieve. It's life, demystified. A place out of self, a network of simple pleasures, not a waltz, but like whirls within a waltz."
You're the one now," Jack said definitively. "That's why you met her. She had something she had to pass on." (p. 95) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

What for others is style, for me is soul. — Johann Georg Hamann

The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become impatient, and impatience is itself a noiseless noise. You can block every superficial sound, but, with each new layer extinguished, a next rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive at last in the infinite attitude of your own riotous mind. Inside is where all the memories last like wells, and the unspoken wishes like golden buds, and the pain that you keep, lingering and implicit, staying inside, nesting inside, articulating, articulating, through to the day you die. (p. 240) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. — Johann Georg Hamann

Kindness is everything ... When you receive it and express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. It's life, demystified. A place out of self. Not a waltz, the the whirls within a waltz. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I wondered what the value was, in the Darwinian sense, of making fast friends like that. There must be some scientific significance to being a follower, to allowing yourself to be persuaded by personality — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Sometimes life is irreverent, and you accidentally discover you are a party to irreverence, and it's hard to know what to do. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Sometimes you can't help but destroy the intricate things in life. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Getting lost just means not understanding. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert. — Johann Georg Hamann

If you travel internationally, you will feel shocked by contemptuous talk of America. To hear your fellow citizens characterized as barbarians who know nothing of love, food, health, and religion, but everything of lawsuits, fast food, and guns, is to experience a national fidelity of which you may not have thought yourself capable. And yet, you're at a loss for a defense. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. — Johann Georg Hamann

Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express (pg 20). — Hilary Thayer Hamann

When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function. — Johann Georg Hamann

The most awful hunger is the type that is satisfied too soon, before it moves you, before you are moved by it, before it becomes protracted and superior, a motivating business, making you honorable, graceful, clever - a hunter. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Now that I'd experienced being a woman to a man I was in love with, I'd become self-conscious about being a woman to the world in general. Of course, being female is always indelicate and extreme, like operating heavy machinery. Every woman knows the feeling of being a stack of roving flesh. Sometimes all you've accomplished by the end of the day is to have maneuvered your body through space without grave incident. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer imitated. — Johann Georg Hamann

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language ... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself. — Johann Georg Hamann

I was an American girl; I possessed what our culture valued most-independance and blind courage. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Physics is nothing but the ABC's. Nature is an equation with an unknown, a Hebrew word which is written only with consonants to which reason has to add the dots. — Johann Georg Hamann

All human wisdom works and has worries and grief as reward. — Johann Georg Hamann

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies. — Johann Georg Hamann

This is where I falter. This is where I lose myself. This is where years invert and minutes reverse and ideas of what was good and right upend. This is where time is dispersed, thrown down like leaves or stones to be read.
It's difficult to say what really happened. I know that my heartache was indescribable, the depth of my loneliness astonishing. I know that I worked very hard, and I never intended to hurt anyone. I cannot describe a life dispossessed of happiness. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race. — Johann G. Hamann

Since he knew things at the beginning, maybe at the end he knew things too. That we had gone as far as chance would take us. That nothing is more sacred than youth or more hopeful than turning yourself over to someone and saying ~ I have this time, it is not a long time, but it is my best time and my best gift, and I give it to you. When I revisit my youth, I re-visit you. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home? — Johann Georg Hamann

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves
this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece. — Johann Georg Hamann

Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact, they would want to know what was wrong, and I would have to say, Nothing, since nothing really was wrong. Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express — Hilary Thayer Hamann

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best advantage
the surest means to success, the surest course to failure. (p. 72) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. — Johann Georg Hamann

Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it's in everyone's interests to coax them through school and get them out of the building. Since it's unethical to turn them loose on society, they get sent to college to be kept out of the mix until their frontal lobes develop more fully. As enticement they are given sports scholarships that will later amount to nothing, not even good health. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him — Johann Georg Hamann

What Tarquin the Proud said in his garden with the poppy blooms was understood by the son but not by the messenger. — Johann Georg Hamann

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society. — Johann Georg Hamann

When you stop looking forward to things, you get used to low expectations and you realise, what's the big deal about success anyway? If we're all to attain everything we've been conditioned to desire - wealth, fame, education, prestige, security - then those things will become so prevalent that they'll become meaningless. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

People with motorcycles always assume that everyone without one wants a ride. I didn't want to offend him, so I said sure. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as entertainment. If the enemy tries to look like you and act like you, only in more affordable clothes, that person is still the enemy, only of a more contemptible, less terrifying variety- — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone. — Johann Georg Hamann

Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith. — Johann Georg Hamann

Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word. — Johann Georg Hamann

Someone who knows she is beautiful, who is always told that she is beautiful, but who, deep down, does not feel very beautiful. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

When you lose your parents as a child, you are indoctrinated into a club, you re taken into life's severest confidence. You are undeceived. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Optimism is when you're not sure where life is going to take you, so naturally you anticipate the best possible outcome — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Whatever Elisabeth did, Franz Joseph's affection remained unchanged. — Brigitte Hamann

Sometimes the best you can do is your small part, perfectly — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I liked the idea of marking the place where a life ends as opposed to the place a corpse is buried. And also the idea of leaving remains uncollected. It's bad enough being dead, but it's worse to have people see you dead, and to have living hands feel a dead you, jostle and dress you, push your stiffening arms into clean sleeves and cry over your blood-drained body. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes. Your shoulders are drawn and your head has fallen and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. (p. 37) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it's the look of exhausted loyalties. Perhaps it's only right that we grow overbig in someone else's space. Perhaps we need to tire and differentiate, leave and adapt. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

My mother refuses to go into the ocean. She respects it, she says, which is basically the same as saying she's afraid. I go in because it scares me ... — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Why remain polite but powerless, in love but a beggar? — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself. — Johann Georg Hamann

Indeed, if a chief question does remain: how is the power to think possible? - The power to think right and left, before and without, with and above experience? then it does not take a deduction to prove the genealogical priority of language. — Johann Georg Hamann

She acknowledged each person's nearness to the dead and helped the group in its struggle for order-who grieved most, whose pain was most real-because in life there is always hierarchy, and it is frankly not profitable to remain modest and anonymous, not even at a funeral. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Sometimes a day is a symbolic day, and you behave symbolically. Sometimes you search inside for a feeling, and, finding none, you remember that no feeling is frequently the most possible feeling. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves. — Johann Georg Hamann

What is freedom when you're too beholden to act spontaneously — Hilary Thayer Hamann