Quotes by Austrian Authors - Page 7

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
Franz Kafka
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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
And after all, if stupidity did not, when seen from within, look so exactly like talent as to be mistaken for it, and if it could not, when seen from the outside, appear as progress, genius, hope, and improvement, doubtless no one would want to be stupid, and there would be no stupidity.
Robert Musil
Talent is a spring from which fresh water is constantly flowing. But this spring loses its value if it is not used in the right way.
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
…much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.
Sigmund Freud
Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.
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
How should we be able to forget those myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn 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. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favour of dogs.
Thomas Bernhard
There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog
Konrad Lorenz
Dogs are minor angels, and I don't mean that facetiously. They love unconditionally, forgive immediately, are the truest of friends, willing to do anything that makes us happy, etcetera. If we attributed some of those qualities to a person we would say they are special. If they had ALL of them, we would call them angelic. But because it's "only" a dog, we dismiss them as sweet or funny but little more. However when you think about it, what are the things that we most like in another human being? Many times those qualities are seen in our dogs every single day-- we're just so used to them that we pay no attention.
Jonathan Carroll
Stealing isn't so easy, often it's hard work, otherwise we'd all be doing it.
Elfriede Jelinek
Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
Ludwig von Mises
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Peter Drucker
Sometimes we believe in miracles, and stars fall from the sky, as if the moon had poured his tears in gold.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
The real comic muse is the one underwhose laughing mask tears roll down.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
One day when I die, I will take your tears in me; as provision for my long journey to the gods.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
A single tear forms, just in the corner of one eye, but it doesn't roll down my cheek; it merely crystallizes in the cold air, it grows and grows into a second giant globe that doesn't want to orbit with the world—it breaks off from the planet and plunges into infinity.
Ingeborg Bachmann
Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one
Ludwig Wittgenstein
It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an "illogical" world would look like.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
There can never be surprises in logic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me.
Sigmund Freud
I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream.
Sigmund Freud
Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by night; perhaps its dark outline lies on some pages of this book, too. But, after all, shadows themselves are born of light. And only he who has experienced dawn and dusk, war and peace, ascent and decline, only he has truly lived.
Stefan Zweig
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a vehicle of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.
Viktor E. Frankl
A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
Viktor E. Frankl
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
Viktor E. Frankl
Do ACTS of MERCY in a BIG WAY.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
In his life he too, like all people, had harboured ideas and dreams. Some he had fulfilled for himself; some had been granted to him. Many things had remained out of reach, or barely had he reached them than they were torn from his hands again. But he was still here. And in the mornings after the first snowmelt, when he walked across the dew-soaked meadow outside his hut and lay down on one of the flat rocks scattered there, the cool stone at his back and the first warm rays of sun on his face, he felt that many things had not gone so badly after all.
Robert Seethaler
Seulement la terre qui obéit,sait bien qu'elle tourne en rond,tandis que nous vers l'infininous précipitons.Translation:But the obedient Earth well knowsthat she moves round and round,whereas we hurtle downtoward infinity.
Rainer Maria Rilke
But we must not forget that all things in the world are connected with one another and depend on one another, and that we ourselves and all our thoughts are also a part of nature. It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of the change of things; made because we are not restricted to any one definite measure, all being interconnected. A motion is termed uniform in which equal increments of space described correspond to equal increments of space described by some motion with which we form a comparison, as the rotation of the earth. A motion may, with respect to another motion, be uniform. But the question whether a motion is in itself uniform, is senseless. With just as little justice, also, may we speak of an “absolute time” --- of a time independent of change. This absolute time can be measured by comparison with no motion; it has therefore neither a practical nor a scientific value; and no one is justified in saying that he knows aught about it. It is an idle metaphysical conception.
Ernst Mach
Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?
Franz Kafka
We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.
Viktor E. Frankl
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
The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation
Franz Kafka
I am of the opinion that there is nothing which has been produced by the will of man which cannot in its turn be altered by another human will.
Adolf Hitler
There are men who have themselves whipped simply to increase their sexual pleasure. These, in contrast with true masochists, regard flagellation as a means to an end.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
With you I understood that pleasure is not something you give or take. It's a way of giving yourself and calling forth the gift of self from another person.
André Gorz
We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.
Sigmund Freud
Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with...
Rainer Maria Rilke
War, money and greed that is the modern heinous Trinity, and they are inseparable these days.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
… human needs are finite, but human greed is not …
Fritjof Capra
Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results.
Peter F Drucker
There are those who see film and take it seriously as an artistic medium, and others who go to have a good time, to simply be entertained. I have to be careful , because it sounds like I am condemning, or criticizing what people are doing. I have nothing against that, in the same way that some people like rock music or to go dancing, and other people like to go to a Beethoven concert. It's just that I'm more interested in the one than the other.
Michael Haneke
Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs.
Franz Kafka
I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
It seems that life, in order to maintain itself, must revolt every so often against man's ceaseless attempts to master its irrational forces with his mind.
Otto Rank
If we not only feed that most intelligent computer which is our brain but also compute the data we collect, we cannot go wrong. In a way we all can guess what will happen.
Gisela Hausmann
Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.
Konrad Lorenz
Girls, there are poets who learn from youto say, what you, in your aloneness, are;and they learn through you to live distantness,as the evenings through the great starsbecome accustomed to eternity.
Rainer Maria Rilke
A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.
Franz Kafka
What does a title mean to me? I do not need a title. My name, which I achieved with my own strength, is my title. I only wish that posterity would sometime confirm the fact that I have striven to achieve my program decently and honestly..
Adolf Hitler
The end is but a new beginning for the eternal "Ba.
Inge H. Borg