Quotes by Austrian Authors - Page 8

Praise from your heart caresses my soul.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
O smile, going where? O upturned look:new, warm, receding surge of the heart--;alas, we are that surge. Does then the cosmic spacewe dissolve in taste of us? Do the angelsreclaim only what is theirs, their own outstreamed existence,or sometimes, by accident, does a bit of usget mixed in? Are we blended in their featureslike the slight vagueness that complicates the looksof pregnant women? Unnoticed by them in theirwhirling back into themselves? (How could they notice?)
Rainer Maria Rilke
Everyone once once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again.
Rainer Maria Rilke
No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
Stefan Zweig
His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired.
Robert Musil
Only he whose bright lyrehas sounded in shadowsmay, looking onward, restorehis infinite praise. Only he who has eatenpoppies with the deadwill not lose ever againthe gentlest chord.Though the image upon the pooloften grows dim:Know and be still.Inside the Double Worldall voices becomeeternally mild.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Twilight of the idols, it cursed from the worship of the extinguished candles.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
Franz Kafka
Go to the Source of Purity; there you will find the truth. Go to the river of Acheron; there you will find the human truth, it is, however, fed by lies.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
The institution of marriage would be damaged. Ideologically, marital morality must be kept intact, in spite of the contradictory facts of sexual life, because marriage is the backbone of the authoritarian family, which in turn is the breeding ground for authoritarian ideologies and character structure.
Wilhelm Reich
We are not poor. We just don't have any money!
Maria Augusta von Trapp
A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient's existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather , to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development.
Viktor E. Frankl
Am I still writing? Unthinkable not to. In the very darkest night the words were like shiny pebbles. They caught the light of the moon and stars and reflected it back. One word among them that shone especially brightly. Simplicity. I would approach it, stepping softly, regard it from all sides, finally pick it up, enchanted by it, recognize that its enchantment lay in its shine, its pure meaning. Simplicity. To simply be there. Simply keep going. The longer I kept going, the easier it was to see how beautiful, simply beautiful, it is to be here. I would like to write about how this word shines. I'd like to write about the simplest things.
Milena Michiko Flašar
It is often asserted that, in view of the situation in quantum theory, object and subject can no longer be sharply separated. 1 To use Heitler’s words, the ‘separation of the world into an “objective outside reality”, and “us”, the self-conscious onlookers, can no longer be maintained. Object and subject become inseparable from each other’. 2 This, according to Bohr, is due to ‘the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behaviour of atomic objects and the interaction with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear’. 3 Heitler elaborates the point in some detail. ‘One may ask’, he writes, ‘if it is sufficient to carry out a measurement by a self-registering apparatus or whether the presence of an observer is required.’ And he arrives at the conclusion that the self-registering apparatus is insufficient, and that ‘the observer appears, as a necessary part of the whole structure, and in his full capacity as a conscious being’.
Karl R. Popper
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
Franz Kafka
…if you cannot hate you cannot love. If you cannot bite you can not kiss. If you cannot curse you cannot bless. Who cannot be a good hater will be a poor lover.
Theodor Reik
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
Peter F Drucker
It is be­cause freedom means the renun­ciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
Friedrich A. Hayek
Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.
Franz Rottensteiner
My favorite, how did you put it now? Landscapes, animals, plants? Favorite what? Books, music, architecture, painting? I don't have any favorite animals, no favorite mosquitoes, favorite beetles, favorite worms, even with the best will in the world I cannot tell you which birds or fish or predators I prefer, it would also be difficult for me to have to choose much more generally.
Ingeborg Bachmann
That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke
In class I was out of place because I could so easily be distracted from concepts by metaphors and facts. Clearly, I was less intelligent than I had hoped, and I felt frustrated by an inarticulate notion that something was wrong if old material was processed as if the immediate past and the uncertain future had no bearing on it.
Ruth Klüger
It must be pointed out that the level of the total stock of money and of the value of the money unit are matters of complete indifference as far as the utility obtained from the use of the money is concerned. Society is always in enjoyment of the maximum utility obtainable from the use of money. Half of the money at the disposal of the community would yield the same utility as the whole stock, even if the variation in the value of the monetary unit was not proportioned to the variation in the stock of money.
Ludwig von Mises
Democracy provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions (other than this framework). It makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason. The question of the intellectual and moral standard of its citizens is to a large degree a personal problem. (The idea that this problem can be tackled, in turn, by an institutional eugenic and educational control is, I believe, mistaken ; some reasons for my belief will be given below.) It is quite wrong to blame democracy for the political shortcomings of a democratic state. We should rather blame ourselves. In a non-democratic state, the only way to achieve reasonable reforms is by the violent overthrow of the government, and the introduction of a democratic framework. Those who criticize democracy on any ' moral ' grounds fail to distinguish between personal and institutional problems. It rests with us to improve matters. The democratic institutions cannot improve themselves. The problem of improving them is always a problem of persons rather than of institutions.
Karl R. Popper
Do ACTS of MERCY in a BIG WAY.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Life without love is a cold branch of a non-grounded tree.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.
Otto Weininger
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
Gustav Mahler
All things want to float.
Rainer Maria Rilke
These self-styled liberals and progressives are honestly convinced that they are true democrats. But their notion of democracy is just the opposite of that of the nineteenth century. They confuse democracy with socialism. They not only do not see that socialism and democracy are incompatible but they believe that socialism alone means real democracy. Entangled in this error, they consider the Soviet system a variety of popular government.
Ludwig von Mises
We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all.
Rainer Maria Rilke
If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The art historians are the real wreckers of art, Reger said. The art historians twaddle so long about art until they have killed it with their twaddle. Art is killed by the twaddle of the art historians. My God, I often think, sitting here on the settee while the art historians are driving their helpless flocks past me, what a pity about all these people who have all art driven out of them, driven out of them for good, by these very art historians. The art historians’ trade is the vilest trade there is, and a twaddling art historian, but then there are only twaddling art historians, deserves to be chased out with a whip, chased out of the world of art, Reger said, all art historians deserve to be chased out of the world of art, because art historians are the real wreckers of art and we should not allow art to be wrecked by the art historians who are really art wreckers. Listening to an art historian we feel sick, he said, by listening to an art historian we see the art he is twaddling about being ruined, with the twaddle of the art historian art shrivels and is ruined. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands of art historians wreck art by their twaddle and ruin it, he said. The art historians are the real killers of art, if we listen to an art historian we participate in the wrecking of art, wherever an art historian appears art is wrecked, that is the truth.
Thomas Bernhard
we want it visibletto showwhen even the most tvisible joyttwill reveal itselfonly when we havetttransformed it within.there’s nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within.
Rainer Maria Rilke
At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).
Viktor E. Frankl
If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming.
Viktor E. Frankl
If your daily life seems poor do not blame it blame yourself tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes... Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
Viktor E. Frankl
And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express
Wilhelm Reich
For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.
Rainer Maria Rilke
It is complete nihilism to propose laying down arms in a world where atom bombs are around. It is very simple: there is no way of achieving peace other than with weapons.
Karl R. Popper
Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery.
Sigmund Freud
If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!
Adolf Hitler
don't let what other people think, stop you from doing the things you love
Adolf Hitler
Perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions are not, like religious ones, incapable of correction.
Sigmund Freud
don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. for success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by - product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it
Victor Frankl
I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, "homeostasis," i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
Viktor E. Frankl
Whoever you are, go out into the evening,leaving your room, of which you know every bit;your house is the last before the infinite,whoever you are.
Rainer Maria Rilke
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
Edward L. Bernays
The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them.
Sigmund Freud
Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.
Stefan Zweig
Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value oflicenses. Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive, and less communicative than the best craftsmenand tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as theirpupils might after half a year of competent drills. Experimentsconducted by Angel Quintero in Puerto Ricosuggest that many young teen-agers, if given the proper incentives, programs, and access to tools, are better thanmost schoolteachers at introducing their peers to the scientific exploration of plants, stars, and matter, and to thediscovery of how and why a motor or a radio functions.
Ivan Illich
You must not blame us scientists for the use which war technicians have put our discoveries.
Lise Meitner
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Viktor E. Frankl