Jo Franz Quotes

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

God does not redeem the personal man by death. He redeems himself by freeing himself from the personality of man.

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

Before one can become a magician he must learn to control his own mind; for mind is the substance with which the magician acts, and the power to control it is the beginning of magic.

Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

Torment yourself as little as possible, then you'll torment me less.

Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true.

Like everything genuine, its inner life guarantees its truth. All works of art created by truthful minds without regard for the work's conventional exterior remain genuine for all times...

From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. To what indifference people may come, to what profound conviction of having lost the right track forever.

Who can do anything after Beethoven?

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

What appears spectral today will be natural tomorrow.

Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

I carry the bars within me.

The intuitive magician will find a certain relationship between the earth zone and the muladhara center.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

The Fathers of the Church were not afraid to go out into the desert because they had a richness in their hearts. But we, with richness all around us, are afraid, because the desert is in our hearts.

My parents had broken through the shackles of dogma

False ideals cannot be shattered by criticism. Right ideals must take up the battle against them.

There's nothing a man can't do if the spirit's there.

No one really understands the grief or joy of another. We always imagine that we are approaching some other, but our lines of travel are actually parallel.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

The nation demands a movement which has written upon its banner the internal and external national freedom that it will act as if it were the spiritual, social and political conscience of the nation.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

So eager are our people to obliterate the present.

What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.