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Quotes by Swiss Authors
"One has complexes. One has the art complex. One goes to the School of Fine Arts and catches the complexes."
"At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance."
"I never think that I am the one who must see to it that cherries grow on stalks."
"The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."
"Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles."
"I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different."
"Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to speak well; the other how to act well."
"If hope is a feeling that can defeat fear,then at that time I walked uphill through a bed of snow, my tracks were of joyful determination."
"I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force."
"Childhood is the sleep of reason."
"A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty."
"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
"When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow."
"Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune."
"That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well."
"Poverty advances discrimination and corruption because society classifies the rich and poor. Poverty augments anger, selfishness, hatred and envy among the people.Poverty entwined with desperation ends up in violence."
"Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion."
"Shame is a soul eating emotion."
"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious."
"You have to be determined on your quest for the fulfilment you need, and while you struggle, living and searching, carry a determined face, heart and spirit more than your inner perseverance.When you're earnestly searching for a job or something valuable in thriving on this life, let determination be your mindset. Have that creativity, resourceful spirit, inquisitive behaviour and resilience matching your gut to succeed in your search."
"How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and always directed to the good of the public?"
"It is the truth, a force of nature that expresses itself through me " I am only a channel " I can imagine in many instances where I would become sinister to you.For instance, if life had led you to take up an artificial attitude, then you wouldn't be able to stand me, because I am a natural being.By my very presence I crystallize; I am a ferment.The unconscious of people who live in an artificial manner senses me as a danger.Everything about me irritates them, my way of speaking, my way of laughing.They sense nature."
"How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?"
"Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices."
"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."
"If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men."
"I moved to Lucerne, where I have lived happily with my family ever since."
"Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million."
"Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost."
"Yes, there's plenty of fish in the sea, but be gifted with a rare catch: that one which lives with "forever faithfulness.""
"If you see oppression, violence, injustice and evil deeds, unzip your silence and uncaring indifference, do something and act against all these unethical instances."
"They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff."
"I can't stay No. 1 for fifty years, you know. We'll see what happens."
"There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character."
"Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence."
"Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off."
"The desire for security must be balanced with our regard for liberty."
"I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for such readers, if one wishes to live beyond one's own age."
"But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people..."
"Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it."
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular."
"Teach children the value of work and to work hard at everything they do. The virtue of compassion and value of appreciation of the hard work of others too."
"As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know."
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