Frases de Ernst Jünger

“Assim são as coisas: os anos da boa colheita são também os anos da rataria.”

“Hoje em dia apenas a pessoa que já não acredita num final feliz, apenas aquele que conscientemente renunciou a ele, é capaz de viver. Não existe um século feliz; mas existem momentos de felicidade, e existe felicidade no momento.”

“Nós não escapamos às nossas fronteiras ou ao nosso ser mais íntimo. É verdade que podemos ser transformados, mas caminharemos sempre dentro das nossas fronteiras, dentro do círculo marcado.”

“A vontade é cega, a dor é míope.”

“Dia a dia ia-se agravando a minha secreta aversão por tudo aquilo de que se tira proveito. Ler e sonhar, estes narcóticos, eram os meus antídotos, mas as regiões onde são possíveis os atos pareciam-me definitivamente fora de alcance.”

“Lá onde a identidade individual se apaga, não há nem punição nem recompensa.”

“A perfeição humana e a perfeição técnica são incompatíveis. Se lutarmos por uma, temos que sacrificar a outra: existe, em qualquer caso, uma ruptura de caminhos. Quem conseguir compreender isso irá fazer um trabalho mais limpo quer num caminho que no outro.”

“I had always been man enough to ruin myself without help.”

“Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment.”

“Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!”

“The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly.”

“Freedom is based on the anarch’s awareness that he can kill himself. He carries this awareness around; it accompanies him like a shadow that he can conjure up. “A leap from this bridge will set me free.””

“The special trait making me an anarch is that I live in a world which I ‘ultimately’ do not take seriously. This increases my freedom; I serve as a temporary volunteer.”

“A great physicist is always a metaphysicist as well; he has a higher concept of his knowledge and his task.”

“A work of art wastes away and becomes lustreless in surroundings where it has a price but not a value. It radiates only when surrounded by love. It is bound to wilt in a world where the rich have no time and the cultivated no money. But it never harmonizes with borrowed greatness.”

“We do not escape our boundaries or our innermost being. We do not change. It is true we may be transformed, but we always walk within our boundaries, within the marked-off circle.”

“I came to realize that one single human being, comprehended in his depth, who gives generously from the treasures of his heart, bestows on us more riches than Caesar or Alexander could ever conquer. Here is our kingdom, the best of monarchies, the best republic. Here is our garden, our happiness.”

“Man's relation to pain changes with every significant shift in fundamental belief. This relation is in no way set; rather, it eludes our knowledge, and yet is the best benchmark by which to discern a race.”

“When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country – and the time will come – then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength.”

“In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.”

“This was the home of the great god Pain, and for the first time I looked through a devilish chink into the depths of his realm. And fresh shells came down all the time.”

“Books and bullets have their own destinies”