Thomas Bernhard Quotes

36 quotes in 534 categories

• The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.
• 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…
• 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,…
• 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…
• 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…
• Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.
• We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist
• Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.
• The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite.
• Toda idea, al fin y al cabo, es una idea demencial.
• 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…
• 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…
• I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was…
• What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous
• ...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…
• Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.
• 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…
• ... Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then…
• It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.
• 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…

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