Top 25 Harry Mulisch Quotes
#1. The world was a soup and thought was generally a fork: it seldom resulted in a good meal.
Harry Mulisch
#2. Even extraordinary circumstances could seem perfectly natural, simply because they were as they were; and in that case the awareness of their extraordinariness only dawned when others found them extraordinary.
Harry Mulisch
#3. The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either.
Harry Mulisch
#4. That's politics, power: it's all verbal, a continuous blizzard of words. But it's not just speaking, it's making statements. It's action; it's doing something without doing anything.
Harry Mulisch
#5. Only when she was alone did she have the sense that she really existed; other people might be frightened precisely because of that sense, but she was frightened of other people because they stole it from her.
Harry Mulisch
#7. Why should "Honor thy father and thy mother" be a commandment, and "Honor thy child" not?
Harry Mulisch
#8. That question is too good to spoil with an answer.
Harry Mulisch
#9. I had already taken a step toward their house, but then Father said, 'No, not there. They're hiding Jews.'"
Christ!" exclaimed Anton, slapping his forehead.
Harry Mulisch
#10. Perhaps, he thought, true pure love, like all flowers, flourished best with its roots in muck and mud. Perhaps that was a law of life that held everything together.
Harry Mulisch
#11. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute.
Harry Mulisch
#12. Whenever something serious happens, you're supposed to count yourself lucky and be happy.
Harry Mulisch
#13. I never understood how anyone could feel small compared with the universe. After all, man knows how overwhelmingly large it is, and a few others things besides, and that means he is not small. The fact that man has discovered all this precisely proves his greatness.
Harry Mulisch
#14. All human beings were of course unique, and they only discovered that when someone else fell in love with them or when no one ever fell in love with them.
Harry Mulisch
#15. When we heard those shots and he saw Ploeg lying in front of the house, what he said was, 'My God, the lizards!'
With wide-eyed disbelief Anton looked out over her head.
Harry Mulisch
#16. A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat.
Harry Mulisch
#17. Perhaps you knew for sure when you loved someone, but then she'd never loved anyone yet, and perhaps she would have to accept that she never would.
Harry Mulisch
#18. Reality wasn't a syllogism like "Socrates is a man - all men are mortal - hence Socrates is mortal," but more like "Helga is a human being - all telephone booths have been vandalized - hence Helga must die." Or like: "Hitler is a human being - all Jews are animals - hence all Jews must die.
Harry Mulisch
#19. He and Onno had once come to the conclusion that you had to decide for yourself whether after your death you wanted to return to your father, then you must go into fire, because that was spirit, but your mother was of course the earth, the body.
Harry Mulisch
#20. Using someone's name during a conversation was like a casual caress, like stroking their hair.
Harry Mulisch
#21. If you find life absurd, shouldn't you find death precisely meaningful?
Harry Mulisch
#22. All cows were like other cows, all tigers like all other tigers - What on earth happened to human beings?
Harry Mulisch
#23. You could chat with anyone; being silent together without it becoming embarrassing was a lot rarer.
Harry Mulisch
#24. Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it's a hopeless job, for everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with an ending.
Harry Mulisch
#25. He understood very well that it was just because of this intimacy that their marriage had not survived.
Harry Mulisch
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