Daniela > Daniela's Quotes

“Seine Fremdheit, Einsamkeit und Gefährung weckte nicht nur etwas wie Mitleid in mir, sie war mir unterhalb oder oberhalb des Rationalen verständlich, weil sie als Ahnung und Möglichkeit auch in mir vorhanden war. Ich war freilich ein ganz anderes Temperament als er, wechselnder, beweglicher, munterer, auch zu Geselligkeit und Spiel geneigter, aber Einsamkeit und sichfremdwissen unter den anderen waren auch mir wohlbekannt. Jenes Stehen am Rande der Welt, an jener Grenze des Lebens, jene Verlorenheit und jenes Starren ins Nichts oder Jenseits, die zu [seinem] Wesen zu gehören und seine dauernde Haltung zu sein schienen, sie hatten für Stunden oder Augenblicke auch mir das Leben fragwürdig gemacht und den Spaß daran verdorben.”
― Hermann Hesse

“You are part of my existence, part of myelf. You have been in every line I ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, ont he sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy, that my mind has ever become aquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence you have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil" (Pip to Estalla)”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Unsure where she was to find a purpose or meaning to her life, she passed one formless day after another.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret. ”
― Hermann Hesse

“One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything that makes others happy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

“When death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

“There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

“The power of gradually losing all feeling of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

“I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Why hate, and struggle, and fight? Let is be as it would.”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

“I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale of humanity [...]”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

“why am I so alone, so hard, so cold? I am so weary of myself! It is eating my soul to its core,--self, self, self! I cannot bear this life! I cannot breathe, I cannot live! Will nothing free me from myself?' She pressed her cheek agains the wooden post. 'I want to love! I want something great and pure to lift me to itself! Dear old man, I cannot bear it any more! I am so cold, so hard, so hard; will no one help me!”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

“For a little sould that cries oout aloud for continued personal existence for itseld and its beloved, there is no help. For the sould which know itself no more as a unit, but as part of the Universal Unit of which the Beloved also is part; which feels within itself the throb of the Universal Life; for that soul there is not death.”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

“Wenigstens eine kleine Weile lang mußte ich, jedem Anspruch entrückt, in Frieden mit mir selbst sprechen können, ohne daß irgendjemand mich dabei unterbrach.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter