Jo Franz Quotes

In France, that let down the barriers more than a hundred years ago, the feeling of antipathy is still strong enough to sustain an anti-Jewish political party

The military and the clergy cause us much annoyance; the clergy and the military, they empty our wallets and rob our intelligence.

Morality, a muzzle for the will; logic, a climbing iron for the mind.

What are the characteristics of today's world so that one may recognize it by them?" It pays pensions and borrows money: credit and monuments.

Those who want to row on the ocean of human knowledge do not get far, and the storm drives those out of their course who set sail.

Do old people always live in the past? What yesterday was firm and true, may not be so today.

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.

Captivating the spirit of the age is a matter of great talent; being swept away by it characterizes an average mind. The two are as different from one another as activity and passivity.

Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.

The ideas of an age are most abundant where they are not crowded by original ideas.

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.

A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.

I am a woman, and even if I could proceed with harshness and rigidity, it would disgust me nonetheless.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him!

Jealousy is a grievous passion that jealously seeks what causes grief.

The finishing off of the encircled enemy army is to be left to the Luftwaffe.

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

No one can crave what truly harms him.

This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.

Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster

What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.

The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt.

Love has as few problems as a motor car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.

All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.

To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.

What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.

To animalise is humane, to humanise is animal.

There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.

One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark

The delights of this life are not its own, but our fear of the ascent into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its own, but our self-torment because of that fear.

I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don't stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man.

Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction--that would not be anything to be deplored--but a weakness of conviction.

You, who can't do anything, think you can bring off something like that? How can you even dare to think about it? If you were capable of it, you certainly wouldn't be in need of it.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)

There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

Now I have finished with all earthly business, and high time too. Yes, yes, my dear child, now comes death.

It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.