Hermann Broch Quotes

• Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.

  Hermann Broch

  Ocean, Sea, Form

  51 Copy quote

• No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.

  Hermann Broch

  Inspirational, Soul, Impression

  20 Copy quote

• The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.

  Hermann Broch

  Gone, World, Madness

  14 Copy quote

• Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?

  Hermann Broch

  Mad, Insane, Gone

  Hermann Broch (2011). “The Sleepwalkers”, p.483, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• What's important is promising something to the people, not actually keeping those promises. The people have always lived on hope alone.

  Hermann Broch

  People, Promise, Important

  8 Copy quote

• Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

  Hermann Broch

  Believe, Reality, Men

  Hermann Broch (2011). “The Sleepwalkers”, p.468, Vintage

  19 Copy quote

• The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.

  Hermann Broch

  Art, Evil, Negative

  11 Copy quote

• While love ceaselessly strives toward that which lies at the hiddenmost center, hatred only perceives the topmost surface . . .

  Hermann Broch

  Lying, Hatred, Strive

  9 Copy quote

• The goddess of beauty is the goddess Kitsch.

  Hermann Broch

  Kitsch, Goddess

  10 Copy quote

• Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

  Hermann Broch

  Mother, Children, Kitsch

  8 Copy quote

• The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational.

  Hermann Broch

  Men, Style, He Man

  Hermann Broch (2011). “The Sleepwalkers”, p.887, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• The essence of kitsch is the confusion of ethical and esthetic categories; kitsch wants to produce not the "good" but the "beautiful."

  Hermann Broch

  Beautiful, Essence, Confusion

  Hermann Broch (2002). “Geist and Zeitgeist: Six Essays by Hermann Broch”, Counterpoint LLC

  9 Copy quote

• Kitsch generates pseudonovelty with no new insight into reality, or else does not concern itself at all with the new and produces its effects with more or less academic eclecticism.

  Hermann Broch

  Reality, Doe, Kitsch

  Hermann Broch, Michael P. Steinberg (1984). “Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860-1920”, p.170, University of Chicago Press

  8 Copy quote

• A kitsch novel describes the world not as it really is, but as it is hoped and feared to be.

  Hermann Broch

  World, Kitsch, Novel

  Hermann Broch (2002). “Geist and Zeitgeist: Six Essays by Hermann Broch”, Counterpoint LLC

  7 Copy quote

• Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves

  Hermann Broch

  Hate, Men, Wish

  9 Copy quote

• You must neither completely nor partially copy the art of others. If so, you will be producing kitsch.

  Hermann Broch

  Art, Kitsch, Copies

  5 Copy quote

• The techniques of kitsch, which are based on imitation, are rational and operate according to formulas; the remain rational even when their result has a highly irrational, even crazy, quality.

  Hermann Broch

  Crazy, Quality, Technique

  Hermann Broch (2002). “Geist and Zeitgeist: Six Essays by Hermann Broch”, Counterpoint LLC

  7 Copy quote

• If the embodiment of the fundamental idea of our age were to be found in Victorian architecture, in the Church of Cristo Re in Rome or the Church in Brasilia, in Moscow University or the Capitol in Washington, then our age would undoubtedly be called the 'age of kitsch.'

  Hermann Broch

  Rome, Ideas, Age

  8 Copy quote

• Kitsch is certainly not "bad art," it forms its own closed system.

  Hermann Broch

  Art, Kitsch, Form

  5 Copy quote

• Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical

  Hermann Broch

  Kitsch, Ethical, Aesthetic

  9 Copy quote

• One who hates is a man holding a magnifying-glass, and when he hates someone, he knows precisely that person's surface, from the soles of his feet all the way up to each hair on the hated head

  Hermann Broch

  Hate, Men, Feet

  10 Copy quote

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