Quotes from Ernst Junger

but rather with a concentration of being, and with that we enter a different order.

Really, doesn't everything make sense? There are, of course, things from which we more or less recover, although some of them are too harsh even for saints. But that is no reason to accuse God. Even if there are reasons to doubt him, the fact that he did not arrange the world like a well-ordered parlor is not one of them. It rather speaks in his favor. This used to be much better understood.

Reading constantly brings new things; the maxims add up, they don't need a particular arrangement, an organizing concept. In an era dominated by confusion, the maxim, like a small building block, remains something that continues to claim literary value.

To start, the sculptor stands before the unwrought block, the pure material which comprises every possibility. The material answers to the chisel; it can destroy, or deliver the spiritual power of life-giving water from out of the rock. "Der Bildhauer steht zunächst dem rohen Block, der puren Materie gegenüber, die jede Möglichkeit umschließt. Sie antworten dem Meißel; er kann zerstören oder Wasser des Lebens geistige Macht aus ihr befreien.

Strangely enough, no one can simply go ahead and do another person harm. You first have to convince yourself that the other has deserved it.

There is no defect without its own virtue and vice versa.

What interested me above all was the relationship of these substances to productivity. It has been my experience, however, that creative achievement requires an alert consciousness, and that it diminishes under the spell of drugs. On the other hand, conceptualization is important, and one gains insights under the influence of drugs that indeed are not possible otherwise.

Bombentrichter und Gräben haben einen engen Horizont. Er reicht nicht weiter als einen Handgranatenwurf.

If the struggle against nihilism is to succeed, it must be fought out in the heart of each one of us. Everyone shared in the guilt, and there is no one who did not stand in need of the healing powers which are to be found in the realms of suffering.

Denn nicht darauf kommt es an, daß eine neue politische oder soziale Schicht die Macht ergreift, sondern darauf, daß ein neues, allen großen historischen Gestalten ebenbürtiges Menschentum den Machtraum sinnvoll erfüllt.

Si el miedo no existiera, carecería de sentido el valor; el miedo es la sombra oscura contra cuyo trasfondo aparece más multicolor y atrayente el riesgo.

el miedo es la sombra oscura contra cuyo trasfondo aparece más multicolor y atrayente el riesgo.

We live life merely at its edge: it is but a battlefield where the struggle for life is fought. It is a remote fort, hastily built in the dimension of the citadel into which we shall retreat at death.

Every master has the servant he deserves.

was an acclaimed novelist and translator of German authors. Along with his original novels, including Medner Hill Farm and The Leaden Cupid, Creighton made many classics of German

Die Härte der Welt wird nur durch Härte gemeistert, nicht aber durch Taschenspielerei.

Aún con todas sus imperfecciones, una de las grandes ideas del hombre ha sido siempre la de retirarse a una celda para ponerse allí, como centinela solitario

La predicción se mueve en el interior del calendario y del tiempo mensurable; el profeta, en cambio, no se rige por las fechas, sino qu es él quien las instaura.

Pero a menudo los textos eran jeroglíficos, hay así obras para las cuales no hemos madurado como lectores hasta hoy. Se asemejan a transparentes cuyos letreros son desvelados por el resplandor del mundo del fuego.

La fuerza y ??la salud habitan en los intrépidos. Por el contrario, el miedo asedia incluso a aquellos que se arman hasta los dientes, y a estos más que a otros

Chivalry here took a final farewell. It had to yield to the heightened intensity of war, just as all fine and personal feeling has to yield when machinery gets the upper hand. The Europe of today appeared here for the first time on the field of battle.

Quizás al final de este siglo se distingan dos clases de hombres, unos formados por la televisión y otros por la lectura

Hoy, como siempre, los que no temen a la muerte son infinitamente superiores a los más grandes exponentes de los poderes temporales

O bien poseer un destino propio o bien equivaler a un número: ésa es la disyuntiva que hoy nos viene impuesta -ciertamente por la fuerza- a todos y cada uno de nosotros, pero el inclinarse por lo uno o por lo otro es algo que corresponde decidir a cada uno por sí mismo