Friedrich Durrenmatt Quotes

Can one end anything? A chapter, a paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on living in spite of subsequent events?

There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done.

I like to say there's certain things you can't take back: One of them is 'I love you,' and one of them is bullets.

There's some bells you can't unring.

What happens to you here is forever.

That should be considered long which can be decided but once.

Confessions are like tattoos in that 1) You convince yourself that the immediate pain of going through the process means it won't bother you later on; 2) They are permanent.

Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can't be unthought.

And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.

Should we put out the light? And then put out the light. But once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital breath again. It needs must wither.

You have to organize, organize, organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part.

What is already woven cannot be undone. It will not make the trees grow again for you to bring the building down on our heads.

Look at situations as contingent, not as inevitable, look at them as the result of a series of historical choices made by men and women, as facts of society made by human beings, and not as natural or god-given, therefore unchangeable, permanent, irreversible.

What makes greatness is starting something that lives after you.

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.

Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.

You can't unscramble eggs.

Because things like this you can only ssay once. And you either get it wrong or right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again.

Knowledge is dangerous. Once you know something, you can't get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.

It is not deeds or acts that last: it is the written record of those deeds and acts.

You're the one who has to live with your choice, everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will

Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever.