Abi > Abi's Quotes

“I was a timid child. For all that, I am sure I was also obstinate, as children are. I am sure that Mother spoiled me too, but I cannot believe I was particularly difficult to manage; I cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me. Now you are, after all, basically a charitable and kindhearted person (what follows will not be in contradiction to this, I am speaking only of the impression you made on the child), but not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface. You can treat a child only in the way you yourself are constituted, with vigor, noise, and hot temper, and in this case such behavior seemed to you to be also most appropriate because you wanted to bring me up to be a strong, brave boy.”
― Franz Kafka

“Du bist für diese einfache, bequeme, mit so wenigem zufriedene Welt von heute viel zu anspruchsvoll und hungrig, sie speit dich aus, du hast für sie eine Dimension zu viel. Wer heute leben und seines Lebens froh werden will, der darf kein Mensch sein wie du und ich. Wer statt Gedudel Musik, statt Vergnügen Freude, statt Geld Seele, statt Betrieb echte Arbeit, statt Spielerei echte Leidenschaft verlangt, für den ist diese hübsche Welt hier keine Heimat…”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“...meine kleine Scheinheimat, wo der Lehnstuhl und der Ofen, das Tintenfaß und die Malschachtel, der Novalis und der Dostojewski auf mich warteten, so, wie auf andere, auf richtige Menschen, wenn sie heimkommen, die Mutter oder Frau, die Kinder, die Mägde, die Hunde, die Katzen warten.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Wenn nun der Gärtner dieses Gartens keine andre botanische Unterscheidung kennt als «eßbar» und «Unkraut», dann wird er mit neun Zehnteln seines Gartens nichts anzufangen wissen, er wird die zauberhaftesten Blumen ausreißen, die edelsten Bäume abhauen oder wird sie doch hassen und scheel ansehen.”
― Hermann Hesse

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great Art.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“People are always ruining things for you.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I don’t even like old cars. I mean, they don’t even interest me at all. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Did you ever get fed up?" I said. "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school and all that stuff?"
"It's a terrific bore."
"I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean."
"Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to--"
"Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always--"
"Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't even shouting.
"Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least--"
"I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one--"
"You know something?" I said. You're probably the only reason I'm in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically."
"You're sweet," she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject.
"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stuck together, the Catholics stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent--"
"Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school that that."
"I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddamn point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape."
"You certainly are.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake," he said. "That's a deer shooting hat."
"Like hell it is." I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. "This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Wir sind verlassen wie Kinder und erfahren wie alte Leute, wir sind roh und traurig und oberflächlich - ich glaube, wir sind verloren.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen Nichts Neues

“Wie sinnlos ist alles, was je geschrieben, getan, gedacht wurde, wenn so etwas möglich ist! Es muß alles gelogen und belanglos sein, wenn die Kultur von Jahrtausenden nicht einmal verhindern konnte, daß diese Ströme von Blut vergossen wurden.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues

“Jugend! Wir sind alle nicht mehr als zwanzig Jahre. Aber jung? Jugend? Das ist lange her. Wir sind alte Leute.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues

“Was erwarten sie von uns, wenn eine Zeit kommt, wo kein Krieg ist? Jahre hindurch war unsere Beschäftigung Töten - es war unser erster Beruf im Dasein. Unser Wissen vom Leben beschränkt sich auf den Tod. Was soll danach noch geschehen? Und was soll aus uns werden?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues

“I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas.
As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes to observe it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“I suddenly felt that it made no difference to me whether the world existed or whether nothing existed anywhere at all.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“Alone -- do you know what that means?”
― Franz Kafka, Das Urteil und andere Erzählungen

“Folgte er aber wirklich dem Rat […] so bliebe er dann trotz allem in seiner Fremde, verbittert durch die Ratschläge, und den Freunden noch ein Stück mehr entfremdet […] fände sich nicht in seinen Freunden und nicht ohne sie zurecht, litte an Beschämung, hätte jetzt wirklich keine Heimat und keine Freunde mehr; war es da nicht viel besser für ihn, er blieb in der Fremde, so wie er war?”
― Franz Kafka, Das Urteil / Die Verwandlung

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis