Quotes from Jakob von Gunten

“That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“One is always half mad when one is shy of people.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!
...
You have been my body's health. Whenever I have read a book, it was you I was reading, not the book, you were the book. You were, you were.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“make yourself invisible, or get busy with something.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“If a hand, a situation, a wave were ever to raise me up and carry me to where I could command power and influence, I would destroy the circumstances that had favoured me, and I would hurl myself down into the humble, speechless, insignificant darkness. I can only breathe in the lower regions.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Hace algún tiempo que el mundo gira en torno al dinero, ya no en torno a la historia.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Siento que la vida exige emociones, no reflexiones.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Vivamos primero, que las observaciones vendrán luego por sí solas.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Hablando en serio: los que obedecen suelen ser una copia exacta de los que mandan.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“This is freedom,’ said the instructress, ‘it’s something very wintry, and cannot be borne for long. One must always keep moving, as we are doing here, one must dance in freedom. It is cold and beautiful. Never fall in love with it. That would only make you sad afterwards, for one can only be in the realm of freedom for a moment, no longer. Look how the wonderful track we are floating on is slowly melting away. Now you can watch freedom dying, if you open your eyes…”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“What a terrible dream I had a few days ago. [...] To the knives and forks clung the tears of enemies I destroyed, and the glasses sang with the sighs of many poor people, but the tear-stains only made me want to laugh, while the hopeless sighs sounded to me like music. I needed banquet music and had it.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Acaso durmiendo es cuando más cerca estamos de Dios.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“I imagine that it would be unspeakably lovely to die with the terrible knowledge that I have offended whosoever I love the most and have filled them with bad opinions of me.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Before our eyes, at least before mine (not hers, perhaps), everything was veiled in impenetrable darkness. "It's the inner chambers," I thought, and I wasn't wrong, either. That's how it was, and my dear instructress seemed to be resolved to show me a world that had been hidden until now. But I must pause for breath.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive people. Well, Schacht will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Schacht is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Schacht are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Schacht. He’s a child and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashings and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Schacht should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Schacht I’m the trueblue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamenta to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“I feel how little it concerns me, everything that’s called "the world," and how grand and exciting what I privately call the world is to me.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“I tell lies somewhere else, but not here, not in front of myself.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“The best-trained part of us, though, is the mouth, it �is always obediently and devoutly shut. And it's only too true: an open mouth is a yawning fact, the fact that its owner is dwelling with his few thoughts in some other place than the domain and pleasure-garden of attentiveness.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“I know this perfectly well, but it was precisely this that I liked - her thinking me silly. Such a peculiar vice: to be secretly pleased to be allowed to observe that one is being slightly robbed.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Ah, all these thoughts, all this peculiar yearning, this seeking, this stretching out of hands toward a meaning. Let it all dream, let it all sleep. I'll simply let it come. Let it come.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“We found ourselves on a smooth, spacious but narrow track of ice or glass. We floated along it, as if on marvellous skates, and we were dancing too, for like a wave the track rose and fell beneath us. It was delightful. I had never seen anything like it and I shouted for joy, ‘How glorious!’ And overhead the stars were shimmering, in a sky that was strangely all pale blue and yet dark, and the moon with its unearthly light was shining down on us skaters. ‘This is freedom,’ said the instructress, ‘it’s something very wintry, and cannot be borne for long. One must always keep moving, as we are doing here, one must dance in freedom. It is cold and beautiful. Never fall in love with it. That would only make you sad afterwards, for one can only be in the realm of freedom for a moment, no longer. Look how the wonderful track we are floating on is slowly melting away. Now you can watch freedom dying, if you open your eyes...”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“The barber's assistant asks if I am a Swede. An American? Not that either. A Russian? Well, then, what are you? I love to answer such nationalistically tinted questions with a steely silence, and to leave people who ask me about my patriotic feelings in the dark. Or I tell lies and say that I'm Danish. Some kinds of frankness are only hurtful and boring.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Mysteries make one dream of unendurable bewitchments, they have the fragrance of something quite, quite unspeakably beautiful.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Claro que también me agradan la dulzura, el calor humano. ¿Quién podría ser tan duro como para aborrecer toda intimidad, toda presencia cálida? No obstante, me guardo siempre de acercarme a los demás; no sé, pero debo tener un talento para para convencer a la gente de la imprudencia de ciertas aproximaciones; al menos pienso que es difícil ganarse mi confianza, y mi calor humano lo valoro mucho, muchísimo, de modo que quien desee conquistarlo habrá de proceder con la máxima cautela”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“We grasp one thing after another, and when we have grasped a thing, it is as if it possessed us. Not we possess it, but the opposite: whatever we have apparently acquired rules over us then. It is impressed upon us that a beneficent effect is to be had from acquiring a little that is firm and definite, that is to say, from growing accustomed and shaping oneself to laws and commands that prescribe a strict external discipline. Perhaps we're being stupefied, certainly we're being made small.”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Un Jakob von Gunten può essere consolato? Finché sarò in salute, non se ne parla neppure.     Se”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

“Se aburren quienes se pasan la vida esperando que algo los estimule desde fuera...”
― Robert Walser, quote from Jakob von Gunten

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Popular quotes

“لا شيء يُعلّمُ الإنساان أكثر من الصدمات واهتزاز المشاعر”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“... I felt that it was not so different from all the other advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed being female made you damageable, that a certain amount of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn’t want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I had decided to do the same”
― Alice Munro, quote from Lives of Girls and Women

“The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specific date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affair, which began with great seriousness and formality. An official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death “no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to refute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered together in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions; the first issue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded the first points to Rubruck. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. As they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according to the topic. Between each round of wrestling, Mongol athletes would drink fermented mare’s milk; in keeping with that tradition, after each round of the debate, the learned men paused to drink deeply in preparation for the next match. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.”
― Jack Weatherford, quote from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

“At the happy ending of the Tempest, Prospero brings the kind back togeter with his son, and finds Miranda's true love and punishes the bad duke and frees Ariel and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone - except Caliban - is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings.
That's how it is in Shakespeare.
But Shakespeare was wrong.
Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again.
And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, quote from Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

“Any man who lives by his beliefs is to be admired, not mocked.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from For the Roses

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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.

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