Quotes by Swiss Authors - Page 10

The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.
Albert Einstein
Muoth was right. On growing old, one becomes more contented than in one's youth, which I will not therefore revile, for in all my dreams I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter
Hermann Hesse
It was one of those happy days that God grants us sometimes on earth to give us an idea of the bliss of heaven.
Johann David Wyss
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more.
Hermann Hesse
Tacitus laughed at the Germanic tribes who tried to stop a torrent with their shields, but it is no less naive to believe in planetary migration or to believe in the establishment by purely human means of a society fully satisfied and perfectly inoffensive and continuing to progress indefinitely. All this proves that man ,though he has inevitably become less naive in some things, has nonetheless learned nothing as far as essentials are concerned; the only thing that man is capable of when left to himself is to "commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways," as Shakespeare would say. And the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is better to go to Heaven naively than to go intelligently to hell.
Frithjof Schuon
For God, who is in heaven, is in man. Where else can heaven be, if not in man? As we need it, it must be within us. Therefore it knows our prayer even before we have uttered it, for it is closer to our hearts than to our
Paracelsus
The morning was a wretched time of day for him. He feared it and it never brought him any good. On no morning of his life had he ever been in good spirits nor done any good before midday, nor ever had a happy idea, nor devised any pleasure for himself or others. By degrees during the afternoon he warmed and became alive, and only towards evening, on his good days, was he productive active and sometimes, aglow with joy.
Hermann Hesse
There's this special talent that humans have that they can be unhappy no matter where they are. But humans have another special talent: We can be happy almost anywhere, too. We can be happy because we're not alone.
Stefan Bachmann
I am superior to you only in one point: I'm awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.
Hermann Hesse
You do see me crossing the meadowstiff and dead from the mist?I long for that home,that home I've never had,and without any hopethat I'll ever be able to reach it.For such a home, never touched,I carry that longing that willnever die, like that meadow diesstiff and dead from the mist.You do see me crossing it, full of dread?
Robert Walser
It was so lovely, Heidi stood with tears pouring down her cheeks, and thanked God for letting her come home to it again. She could find no words to express her feelings, but lingered until the light began to fade and then ran on.
Johanna Spyri
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, the longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home.
Hermann Hesse
My father says you remember the smell of your country no matter where you are but only recognize it when you're far away.
Aglaja Veteranyi
what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton
One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.
Hermann Hesse
It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life?Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?
Alain de Botton
It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.
Alain de Botton
Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.
Hermann Hesse
Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.
Alain de Botton
He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.
Alain de Botton
It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views.
Frithjof Schuon
If your callswere measures of Time,a day would last a centuryand in between us would beAn Eternity.
Natasha Tsakos
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de Botton
Good stories are like those noble wild animals that make their home in hidden spots, and you must often settle down at the entrance of the caves and woods and lie in wait for them a long time.
Hermann Hesse
Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Let us never be afraid of innocent joy; God is good and what he does is well done; resign yourself to everything, even happiness; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, for the spirit of joy and gratitude.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Albert Einstein
No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself.
Karl Barth
If I spend every moment, for the rest of my days, thanking God for all his goodness to us, that would still not be enough.
Johanna Spyri
gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid but which none have a right to expect
Rousseau Jean-Jacques 1712-1778
Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
Alain de Botton
The ideas of the moral order and of God belong to the ineradicable substrate of the human soul.
C.G. Jung
I have always consoled myself that he such as I who is not a genius, can still achieve much that is useful when he does his work right and chooses his work to suit his talents.
Johann Rudolf Wolf
PARAPHRASE: Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.
Albert Einstein
To wish to withstand the Holy Spirit would be the one unforgivable sin.
Karl Barth
A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.
Albert Einstein
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Hermann Hesse
Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism or aggression but, at the rare moments one can imagine it, always love.
Alain de Botton
Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!...You have been my body's health. Whenever I have read a book, it was you I was reading, not the book, you were the book. You were, you were.
Robert Walser
If we were fossils of two snails caught in a rock for millions of years.Would we know we were together?
Natasha Tsakos
Love of God," he said slowly, searching for words, "is not alwaysthe same as love of good, I wish it were that simple. We know whatis good, it is written in the Commandments. But God is notcontained only in the Commandments, you know; they are only aninfinitesimal part of Him. A man may abide by the Commandmentsand be far from God.
Hermann Hesse
Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.
Alain de Botton
A feeble body makes a feeble mind. I do not know what doctors cure us of, but I know this: they infect us with very deadly diseases, cowardice, timidity, credulity, the fear of death. What matter if they make the dead walk, we have no need of corpses; they fail to give us men, and it is men we need.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.
Alain de Botton
Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.
Albert Einstein
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.
Alain de Botton
A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.
Albert Einstein
Life is short, precious, and should not be wasted. Everyone has a chance at it. We’re equals after all. There are no pawns, no kings, and no queens. We’re all humans and we all have the same value.
Cristelle Comby
Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one--that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
Alain de Botton
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
Alain de Botton
It is when we stop believing that religions have been handed down from above or else that they are entirely daft that matters become more interesting.
Alain de Boton
I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.
C.G. Jung
Her voice was loud and cheerful, the way it was when nothing was well and she was determined not to show it.
Stefan Bachmann
But, despite everything, it was almost a pleasure to suffer those torments. I had crawled through life blindly and dully for so long, my heart had kept silent and had sat, impoverished, in a corner for so long, that even these self accusations, this horror, this whole ghastly emotion in my soul was welcome. After all, it was an emotion, flames were still rising, it showed that my heart was still alive! In a confused way, in the midst of misery I felt something like liberation and springtime.
Herman Hesse
For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro, not even the idiot, who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements; and to explain so complex a man as Harry by the artless division into wolf and man is a hopelessly childish attempt. Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two. His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands.
Hermann Hesse
Human beings tend to be unable to estimate how biased they are.
Jean-François Manzoni
Haven't you got it through your head that human thought is a thing of the past & that philosophy is worse than Bertillon's guide to harassed cops? You make me laugh with your metaphysical anguish, it's just that you're scared silly, frightened of life, of men of action, of action itself, of lack of order. But everything is disorder, dear boy. Vegetable, mineral & animal, all disorder, & so is the multitude of human races, the life of man, thought, history, wars, inventions, business & the arts, & all theories, passions & systems. It's always been that way. Why are you trying to make something out of it? And what will you make? What are you looking for? There's no truth. There's only action, action subjected to every possible & imaginable contingency & contradiction. Life. Life is a crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust, stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. What can you do about it, my poor friend?
Blaise Cendrars
And so the Steppenwolf had two natures, a human and a wolfish one. This was his fate, and it may well be that it was not a very exceptional one. There must have been many men who have had a good deal of the dog or the fox, of the fish or the serpent in them without experiencing any extraordinary difficulties on that account. In such cases, the man and the fish lived on together and neither did the other any harm. The one even helped the other. Many a man indeed has carried this condition to such enviable lengths that he has owed his happiness more to the fox or the ape in him than the man.
Hermann Hesse