Jo Franz Quotes

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

Evil is whatever distracts.

I believe one day the distance between myself and God will / disappear.

From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.

I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

Writing [is] a form of prayer.

The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.

They did not know what we can now guess at, contemplating the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it appears in ordinary existence.

The world resembles a stage on which every man is playing a part.

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

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.

I, however, cannot force myself to use "meat drugs" to cheat on my loneliness.

Todayart is moving in a direction of which our fathers would never even have dreamed.We stand before the new pictures as in a dream and we hear the apocalyptic horsemen in the air.

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

Art will liberate itself from the needs and desires of men. No longer will we paint a forest ora horseas we like oras theyappear to us, but as they really are.

No one really understands the grief or joy of another.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved.

It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party.

The essence of conservative ideology is its being anchored in the divine order of things.

In the oldest chronicles of the times conserved in Hungary, reports will be found of Gypsy music, but never of any other, either Magyar, Slavic or Jewish.

Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

When you write the story of two happy lovers, let the story be set on the banks of Lake Como.

The supreme harmony of the cosmos is selected in the harmony of the spirit.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

The basic formula of all sin is: frustrated or neglected love.

Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.

To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.

The runner must be a fanatic for hard work and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

Isn't it awful that cold feet make for a cold imagination and that a pair of woollen socks induce good thoughts!

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

One must first become a magician before one he can become a Kabbalist. As a Kabbalist, one works differently and more advantageously.

"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.

Between too early and too late, there is never more than a moment.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy.

The true word leads; the untrue misleads.

Training is principally an act of faith.

Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house.