Quotes from I'm Not Stiller

Max Frisch ·  377 pages

Rating: (3.1K votes)


“We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes--or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Freunde müssen einander verstehen um Freunde zu bleiben. Brüder sind immer Brüder.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“The demand that we love our neighbor as ourselves contains as an axiom the demand that we shall love ourselves, shall accept ourselves as we were created.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Cause and effect are never divided between two people.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Oh, this yearning to be white, this yearning to have straight hair, this lifelong striving to be different from the way one is created this great difficulty in accepting oneself, I knew it and saw only my own longing from outside, saw the absurdity of our yearning to be different from what we are...”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller



“Es gibt allerlei Arten, einen Menschen zu morden oder wenigstens seine Seele, und das merkt keine Polizei der Welt. Dann genügt ein Wort, eine Offenheit im rechten Augenblick. Dann genügt ein Lächeln. Ich möchte den Menschen sehen, der nicht durch Lächeln umzubringen ist oder durch Schweigen.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Wenn ich so allein bin, siehst du, und mich an alles erinnere, das ist das Schlimmste, daß man allein nicht darüber lachen kann, oder dann ist es nur so ein böses und bitteres Lachen, so daß man später über genau die gleichen Dinge doch wieder heult.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Nothing is harder than to accept oneself.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Man kann alles erzählen, nur nicht sein wirkliches Leben; – diese Unmöglichkeit ist es, was uns verurteilt zu bleiben, wie unsere Gefährten uns sehen und spiegeln, sie, die vorgeben, mich zu kennen, sie, die sich als meine Freunde bezeichnen und nimmer gestatten, daß ich mich wandle [...].”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller


“Stiller jo je debelo gledal.
»Tako torej gledaš name!« je rekla Julika. »Si pač naredil podobo o meni, to pač vidim, dokončno podobo za vselej, in konec. Drugače kot takšne, saj to čutim, me zdaj kratko in malo več ne moreš videti. Kajne?« Stiller si je prižgal cigareto. »Jaz sem v zadnjem času tudi o mnogočem premišljevala,« je rekla Julika in pihala snežne kristale s svoje odeje tudi zdaj, ko je govorila sama, »- v zapovedih ne stoji kar tako: ne smeš si ustvariti podobo! Vsaka podoba je greh. Tole je ravno nasprotno kot ljubezen, vidiš, kar zdajle počneš s takim govorjenjem. Ne vem, če to razumeš. Če takega človeka ljubiš, mu vendar pustiš odprto možnost in si kljub vsem spominom kratko in malo pripravljen čuditi se, zmerom znova se čuditi, kako je drugačen, kako različen in ne takšenle, ne dokončna podoba, kakršno si delaš ti o svoji Juliki. Lahko ti rečem samo to: ni tako. Vselej se z govorjenjem v kaj zapičiš – ne smeš si delati podobe o meni! To je vse, kar ti na to lahko rečem.”
― Max Frisch, quote from I'm Not Stiller



About the author

Max Frisch
Born place: in Zurich, Switzerland
Born date May 15, 1911
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“His body language was that of someone frozen and not yet thawed out.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties


“The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled. It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance.”
― Lewis Thomas, quote from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher


“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth. We cannot go on living like this.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land


“Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself


“We were young and thought we were invincible and we threw ourselves into the gears of history and it ground us up.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House


Interesting books

First Test
(44.9K)
First Test
by Tamora Pierce
Oblomov
(22.8K)
Oblomov
by Ivan Goncharov
The Icebound Land
(56.1K)
The Icebound Land
by John Flanagan
Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
(34.7K)
Percy Jackson's Gree...
by Rick Riordan
The Invisible Game: The Mindset of a Winning Team
(126)
The Invisible Game:...
by Zoltan Andrejkovics
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
(43.8K)
Oranges Are Not the...
by Jeanette Winterson

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.