Hermann Broch Quotes

There's a lot of reasons you can think of to say why you act, but I can only say that it just felt good. At the same time, it felt really painful. It's still troubling and stressful to me.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?

...being torn apart by far too many loyalties that could not possibly live together in the same brain.

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

Sometimes what my analytical mind says to me is not what I'll do.

Tell a man something is bad, and he's not at all sure he wants to give it up. Describe it as stupid, and he knows it's the better part of caution to listen.

It's not like you make a decision and everything inside you is 100 percent happy.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

There never was a war that was not inward.

People and nations act on the basis of what they feel rather than what is real.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.

I am always fascinated by the mental struggles that people and characters have.

What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

It's the age-old battle between mind and heart, which seldom want the same thing.

There is always a gap between intention and action.

Life it seems a struggle between what we think and what we see

It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time.

Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her?Never mind physically but betray her in his mind,in the very "poetry of his soul".Well,it's not easy but men do it all the time.

My heart says one thing. My head says another. Very hard to get your heart and head together in life.

Behavior is the outcome of the battle among internal systems.

here was a silence between them for a moment, and she wondered if all women, when in love, were torn between two impulses, a longing to throw modesty and reserve to the winds and confess everything, and an equal determination to conceal the love forever, to be cool, aloof, utterly detached, to die rather than admit a thing so personal, so intimate.