Thomas Bernhard > Quotes

“Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death”
― Thomas Bernhard

“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 to be myself.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gathering Evidence

“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, Woodcutters

“We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Extinction

“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 one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“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 always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Loser

“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, Extinction

“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 time, otherwise it's lost.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt -- an attempt that seems touching even to our intellect -- to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hyprocrisy and self-deception, Reger said. These pictures are full of lies and falsehoods and full of hypocrisy and self-deception, there is nothing else in them if we disregard their often inspired artistry. All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man's absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. That is what all these pictures express, this helplessness which, on the one hand, embarasses the intellect and, on the other hand, bewilders the same intellect and moves it to tears, Reger said.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters: A Comedy

“The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me--I have no others.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“We always wonder, when we see two people together, particularly when they're actually married, how these two people could have arrived at such a decision, such an act, so we tell ourselves that it's a matter of human nature, that it's very often a case of two people going together, getting together, only in order to kill themselves in time, sooner or later to kill themselves, after mutually tormenting each other for years for for decades, only to end up killing themselves anyway, people who get together even though they probably clearly perceive their future of shared torment, who join together, get married, in the teeth of all reason, who against all reason commit the natural crime of bringing children into the world who then proceed to be the unhappiest imaginable people, we have evidence of this situation wherever we look... People who get together and marry even though they can foresee their future together only as a lifelong shared martyrdom, suddenly all these people qua human beings, human beings qua ordinary people... enter into a union, into a marriage, into their annihilation, step by step down they go into the most horrible situation imaginable, annihilation by marriage, meaning annihilation mental, emotional, and physical, as we can see all around us, the whole world is full of instances confirming this... why, I may well ask myself, this senseless sealing of the bargain, we wonder about it because we have an instance of it before us, how did this instance come to be?”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“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, Concrete

“I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself...”
― Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew

“You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“After all, there is nothing but failure.”
― Thomas Bernhard

“The study of sickness is the most poetic of the sciences.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Frost

“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, The Loser

“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

“...He was just scraps of words and dislocated phrases.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Frost

“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 dog. This fact is more depressing than any other.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“قلت لنفسى وأنا أجلس فوق دكة فى منتزه المدينة، إن هذه ربما تكون آخر مرة أرى فيها صديقى. لم أكن اعتقد أن جسدا بهذا الوهن، خبت فيه جذوة الحياة وانطفأت شعلة الإرادة، سيتحمل أكثر من بضعة أيام. زُلزل كيانى لرؤيته هكذا يعانى الوحدة فجأة، هذا الإنسان الذى هو بسليقته إنسان اجتماعى، كما يقولون، منذ مولده وحتى بلوغه، وظل اجتماعيا إلى أن أمسى كهلا ثم شيخا. ثم خطر على بالى كيف تعرّفت إلى هذا الإنسان الذى أضحى بالفعل صديقى، الذى طالما أسعدَ وجودى غاية السعادة، هذا الوجود الذى لم يكن بائسا قبل التعرف إليه، إلا أنه كان شاقا مُجهدا. كان هو الذى فتح عينى على أشياء كثيرة كنت أجهلها تماما، وأرشدنى إلى دروب لم يكن لى علم بها، وفتح لى أبواباً كانت موصدة بإحكام فى وجهى، وأعاد لى نفسى فى تلك اللحظة الحاسمة عندما كدت أهلك فى ريف ناتال. حقا لقد كنت أصارع فى تلك المرحلة قبل التعرف إلى صديقى كى أقهر مزاجا سوداويا مَرَضيا، أو لنقل اكتئابا، سيطر علىّ منذ سنوات حتى أننى عددت نفسى فى عداد الضائعين. سنوات طويلة لم أعمل خلالها عملا ذا قيمة. فى معظم الأحيان كنت أبدأ يومى وأنهيه بلا مبالاة تامة. كم من مرة أوشكت آنذاك على وضع نهاية لحياتى بيدى. سنوات طويلة لم أكن أفعل شيئا سوى الهروب فى هواجس الانتحار الفظيعة والقاتلة للروح، هواجس جعلت كل شىء فى حياتى غير مُحتَمَل، وجعلتنى أنا نفسى لا أُحتَمل أكثر من أى شىء آخر، كنت أهرب من مواجهة العبث اليومى المحيط بى، والذى كنت أندفع إليه، ربما لضعفى العام، ولضعف شخصيتى على وجه خاص. طوال سنوات لم أعد أرغب فى تخيل إمكانية مواصلة الحياة، ولا حتى مجرد الوجود. لم يعد لى هدف، وهو ما أفقدنى السيطرة على ذاتى. كنت- بمجرد استيقاظى فى الصباح الباكر- أجد نفسى رغما عنى فريسة لأفكار الانتحار التى لا أستطيع التغلب عليها طيلة النهار. هجرنى الجميع آنذاك، لأننى هجرت الجميع، هذه هى الحقيقة، ولأننى لم أعد أرغب فى رؤية أحد، ولم أعد أرغب فى شىء. لكننى جبُنت عن إنهاء حياتى بيدى. ربما عندما وصلت إلى قمة يأسى، لا أخجل من لفظ الكلمة، إذ لم أعد أرغب فى خداع ذاتى وتجميل شىء، ليس هناك ما يمكن تجميله فى مجتمع وعالم يُجمِّل باستمرار كل شىء بطريقة مقيتة، فى ذلك الوقت ظهر باول، وتعرفت إليه فى شارع بلومنشتوك عند صديقتنا المشتركة إرينا.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew

“I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Loser

“We're constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously , because we recognize at every moment that we did it all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction and so forth, so Roithamer. But the ultimate correction is one we keep delaying, the kind others have made without ado from one minute to the next, I think, so Roithamer, the kind they could, by the time they no longer thought about it, because they were afraid even to think about it, but then they did correct themselves, like my cousin, like his father, my uncle, like all the others whom we knew, as we thought, whom we knew so thoroughly, yet we didn't really know all these peoples' characters, because their self-correction took us by surprise, otherwise we wouldn't have been surprised by their ultimate existential correction, their suicide.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Frost

“Ausgerechnet der Mensch ist unmenschlich.”
― Thomas Bernhard