Desire Quote by Bernhard Schlink

““...if something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.””

Bernhard Schlink

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Desire Regret

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“Ne ispada li, onda, da je egzistencijalni umor rezultat premalog, a ne prevelikog angažovanja? Postajemo li umorni usled toga što olakšavamo sebi situaciju, a…

Bernhard Schlink

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Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage…

Bernhard Schlink

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“The truth of what one says lies in what one does.”

Bernhard Schlink

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“When she had fallen asleep on me, and the saw in the yard was quiet, and a blackbird was singing as the colors of…

Bernhard Schlink

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“To anyone ignorant of history, it would be easy to see ways of life in earlier times simply as ways of life in foreign…

Bernhard Schlink

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“What is it?' 'Nothing,' he said, and put his arm around her. 'You sighed.' 'I'd like to be further along than I am.' She snuggled against his side. 'I know that feeling. But don't we make progress in fits and starts? Nothing happens for a long time, then suddenly we get a surprise, have an encounter, reach a decision point,…

Bernhard Schlink

“But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen…

Bernhard Schlink

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“I wanted to pose myself both tasks - understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both”

Bernhard Schlink

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Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..

Bernhard Schlink

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“I had no one to point at. Certainly not my parents, because I had nothing to accuse them of. The zeal for letting in the daylight, with which , as a member of the concentration camps seminar, I had condemned my father to shame, had passed, and it embarrassed me. But what other people in my social environment had done,…

Bernhard Schlink

Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him. The dog you take for a walk, the cat you play with and that curls up in your lap, purring, to be stroked - you can be fond of them, you can even need them to a certain extent, and nonetheless the whole…

Bernhard Schlink

“There are matters one simply cannot get drawn into, that one must distance oneself from, if the price is not life and limb. هناك أمور لا يمكن للواحد ببساطة أن ينخرط فيها ، يجب على الواحد ان ينحي نفسه عنها ، حتى وإن كان الثمن موته أو بتره.”

Bernhard Schlink

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Explore all 104 Bernhard Schlink quotes

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I put myself in the student's place and remember the frustrations, doubts, determination, and desires I felt when I was going through the initial…

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Passion is what you need to be good, an unforgiving passion.

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I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is…

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Ye youths and virgins, when your generous blood Has drunk the warmth of fifteen summers, now The loves invite; now to new rapture wakes…

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I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is…

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On the brink of being satiated, desire still appears infinite.

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If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the…

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He caught her, she fell, he caught her in his arms, he held her tightly unconscious of what he was doing. He held her up, though tottering himself. He felt as if his head were filled with smoke; flashes of light slipped through his eyelids; his thoughts vanished; it seemed to him that he was performing a religious act, and…

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Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not…

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“The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”

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In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies. All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive - as if one could be in danger from feeling too much instead of too little. But my outsize emotions were well represented…

Betsy Lerner