Heinrich Harrer Quotes

Floating down the river, I could not keep my eyes off the Potala; I knew the Dalai Lama was on the roof looking at me through his telescope. On ~ Heinrich Harrer

They were nice, friendly people, and they invited us to share their fire and drink a cup of rancid butter tea with them. ~ Heinrich Harrer

All our dreams begin in youth. ~ Heinrich Harrer

I shall always remember the next day for one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. As we marched forward we caught sight, after a while, of the gleaming golden towers of a monastery in the far distance. Above them, shining superbly in the morning sun, were tremendous walls of ice, and we gradually realised that we were looking at the giant trio Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. ~ Heinrich Harrer

The name Kyirong means "the village of happiness," and it really deserves the name. I shall never cease thinking of this place with yearning, and if I can choose where to pass the evening of my life, it will be in Kyirong. There I would build myself a house of red cedar wood and have one of the rushing mountain streams running through my garden, in which every kind of fruit would grow, for though its altitude is over 9,000 feet, Kyirong lies on the twenty-eighth parallel. When we arrived in January the temperature was just below freezing it seldom falls below -10 degrees Centigrade. The seasons correspond to the Alps, but the vegetation is subtropical. Once can go skiing the whole year round, and in the summer there is a row of 20,000-footers to climb. ~ Heinrich Harrer

In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Llhasa. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Shall always remember the next day for one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. As we marched forward we caught sight, after a while, of the gleaming golden towers of a monastery in the far distance. Above them, shining superbly in the morning sun, were tremendous walls of ice, and we gradually realised that we were looking at the giant trio Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. As ~ Heinrich Harrer

One of the best characteristics of the Tibetan people is their complete tolerance of other creeds. Their monastic theocracy has never sought the conversion of infidels. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Fear ... the right and necessary counterweights to that courage which urges men skyward, and protects them from self-destruction ~ Heinrich Harrer

What has since happened in Tibet is hardly to be believed. More than 1.2 million Tibetans lost their lives and of about six thousand monasteries, temples, and shrines, 99 percent were either looted or totally destroyed. In ~ Heinrich Harrer

There were only three names on the map of the region we had brought with us, but we now filled in more than two hundred. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Decades of destruction, suppression, genocide, sterilization, and political indoctrination could not break the Tibetans' will for freedom, or their deep-rooted religious beliefs. On ~ Heinrich Harrer

Let us grant courage and the love of pure adventure their own justification, even if we cannot produce any material support for them. Mankind has developed an ugly habit of only allowing true courage to the killers. Great credits accrue to the one who bests another; little is given to the man who recognises in his comrade on the rope a part of himself, who for long hours of extreme peril faces no opponent to be shot or struck down, but whose battle is solely against his own weakness and insufficiency. Is the man who, at moments when his own life is in the balance, has not only to safeguard it but, at the same time, his friend's- even to the extent of mutual self-sacrifice- to receive less recognition than a boxer n the ring, simply because the nature of what he is doing is not properly understood? In his book about the Dachstein, Kurt Maix writes: "Climbing is th emost royl irrationality out of which Man, in his creative imagination, has been able to fashion the highest personal values." Those personal values, which we gain from our approach to the mountains, are great enough to enrich our life. Is not the irrationality of its very lack of purpose the deepest argument for climbing? But we had better leave philosophical niceties and unsuitable psychoanalisis out of this. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Tibet has not yet been infested by the worst disease of modern life, the everlasting rush. No one overworks here. Officials have an easy life. They turn up at the office late in the morning and leave for their homes early in the afternoon. If an official has guests or any other reason for not coming, he just sends a servant to a colleague and asks him to officiate for him.
Women know nothing about equal rights and are quite happy as they are. They spend hours making up their faces, restringing their pearl necklaces, choosing new material for dresses, and thinking how to outshine Mrs. So-and-so at the next party. They do not have to bother about housekeeping, which is all done by the servants. But to show that she is mistress the lady of the house always carries a large bunch of keys around with her. In Lhasa every trifling object is locked up and double-locked.
Then there is mah-jongg. At one time this game was a universal passion. People were simply fascinated by it and played it day and night, forgetting everything else - official duties, housekeeping, the family. The stakes were often very high and everyone played - even the servants, who sometimes contrived to lose in a few hours what they had taken years to save. Finally the government found it too much of a good thing. They forbade the game, bought up all the mah-jongg sets, and condemned secret offenders to heavy fines and hard labor. And they brought it off! I would never have believed it, but though everyon ~ Heinrich Harrer

Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquility and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Yes, we had made and excursion into another world and we had come back, but we had brought the joy of life and of humanity back with us. In the rush and whirl of everyday things, we so often live alongside one another without making any mutual contact. We had learned on the North Fae of the Eiger that men are good, and the earth on which we were born is good."(p.126) ~ Heinrich Harrer

The country through which we had been travelling for days has an original beauty. Wide plains were diversified by stretches of hilly country with low passes. We often had to wade through swift running ice-cold brooks. It has long since we had seen a glacier, but as we were approaching the tasam at Barka, a chain of glaciers gleaming in the sunshine came into view. The landscape was dominated by the 25,000-foot peak of Gurla Mandhata; less striking, but far more famous, was the sacred Mount Kailash, 3,000 feet lower, which stands in majestic isolation apart from the Himalayan range. ~ Heinrich Harrer

I lacked the advice and guidance of experienced counsellors and so wasted many years before I realised that one must not pursue several aims at the same time. ~ Heinrich Harrer

There are times when visible poverty has its advantages. ~ Heinrich Harrer

But we had no intention of becoming shopkeepers or merely earning money. We needed work that would at the same time procure us satisfaction. And more than anything, we desired to make ourselves useful ~ Heinrich Harrer

It was inevitable that Red China would invade Tibet, and then there would be no place for us two friends of Tibetan independence. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the cries of wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear, cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that my story may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Tibetans are not famed for their perseverance. Full of enthusiasm at the start, and ready for anything new, their interest flags before long. For this reason I kept losing pupils and replacing them, which was not very satisfactory for me. The children of good families whom I taught were without exception intelligent and wide awake, and were not inferior to our children in comprehension. In the Indian schools the Tibetan pupils are ranked for intelligence with Europeans. One must remember that they have to learn the language of their teachers. In spite of that handicap, they are often at the head of the class. There was a boy from Lhasa at St. Joseph's College, at Darjeeling, who was not only the best scholar in the school, but also champion in all the games and sports. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. ~ Heinrich Heine

Like a great poet, nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. There are simply a sun, flowers, water, and love. ~ Heinrich Heine

It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people. ~ Heinrich Heine

There are some strange unrecognized forms of prostitution with which prostitution itself is an honest trade: at least you get something for your money. ~ Heinrich Boll

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people. ~ Heinrich Heine

The greatest victory a man can win is victory over himself. ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

THE FOLLOWING LATE April I found a dead bull moose about two kilometers from the site where I had left the doe. A bull moose probably weighs ten times as much as a white-tailed doe. This one looked emaciated; it had apparently died from complications of moose tick disease, a common ~ Bernd Heinrich

From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom. ~ Heinrich Heine

The lotus flower is troubled
At the sun's resplendent light;
With sunken head and sadly
She dreamily waits for the night. ~ Heinrich Heine

We see that in the organic world, to the same degree that reflection gets darker and weaker, grace grows ever more radiant and dominant. But just as two lines intersect on one side of a point, and after passing through infinity, suddenly come together again on the other side; or the image in a concave mirror suddenly reappears before us after drawing away into the infinite distance, so too, does grace return once perception, as it were, has traversed the infinite
such that it simultaneously appears the purest in human bodily structures that are either devoid of consciousness or which possess an infinite consciousness, such as in the jointed manikin or the god. ~ Heinrich Von Kleist

My father learned his disinterest under the guise of masculinity. Boys don't cry. There are whole disciplines, institutions, rubrics in our culture which serve as categories of denial.
Science is such a category. The torture and death that Heinrich Himmler found disturbing to witness became acceptable to him when it fell under this rubric. He liked to watch the scientific experiments in the concentration camps ~ Susan Griffin

It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all. ~ Heinrich Heine

War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state ... What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men! ~ Heinrich Von Treitschke

These are the experiences I wish to record in this book, which should really be called The Diary of a Palaeontologist. But in committing them to paper I found it advisable to alter and add a good deal, to enable the reader without specialized training to follow me along the winding paths of palaeontology and prehistory. ~ Gustav Heinrich Ralph Von Koenigswald

Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath. Yet, tree planting is often pictorially advertised on television and in national magazines by focusing on cupped caring hands around a seedling. But forests do not need this godlike interference ... Planting tree plantations is permanent deforestation ... The extensive planting of just one exotic species removes thousands of native species. ~ Bernd Heinrich

I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men
for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune
may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary. ~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

But oh! the Latin!-Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. Lucky dogs! they already knew in their cradles the nouns ending in im. I on the contrary had to learn it by heart, in the sweat of my brow ... ~ Heinrich Heine

Newness hath an evanescent beauty. ~ Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Zimmerhe had a little saying : The best things cant be told - because they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second best are misunderstood : myths, which are metaphoric attempts to point to the way toward the first. And the third best have to do with history, science, biography, and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind. ~ Joseph Campbell

We know the Russian methods exactly. I haven't the faintest intention of being taken prisoner by the Russians. ~ Heinrich Muller

Each violet peeps from its dwelling to gaze at the bright stars above. ~ Heinrich Heine

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics. ~ Heinrich Heine

The spring's already at the gate With looks my care beguiling; The country round appeareth straight A flower-garden smiling. ~ Heinrich Heine

... she said she would not sign any deposition containing the word "amorous" instead of "advances". For her the difference was of crucial significance, and one of the reasons she had separated from her husband was that he had never been amorous but had consistently made advances. ~ Heinrich Boll

The resolve rising in her soul to die with me drew me I cannot tell you how powerfully, irresistibly to her bosom. Do you remember that I often asked you would you die with me? - But you always said no - A whirlpool of never before experienced happiness has seized hold of me and I cannot deny that her grave is dearer to me than the beds of all the empresses in the world. - Oh, my dear friend, may God soon call you to that better world where we shall all with the love of the angels embrace one another again.
- Adieu. ~ Heinrich Von Kleist

And my father, after all, was a nationalist. ~ Heinrich Mann

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high ~ Heinrich Heine

Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved. ~ Heinrich Heine

Between 1950 and 1951, I worked as a temporary employee in the Cologne Bureau of Statistics. From summer 1951 on, I have lived as a freelance writer with a fixed postal address in Cologne but with a continually shifting place of work. ~ Heinrich Boll

Every Alchymist is a Physician or a Sope-boyler. ~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Politicians, ideologists, theologians and philosophers try time and again to provide solutions with nothing remaining: prefab solved problems. ~ Heinrich Boll

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues. ~ Heinrich Heine

Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils ... all great, powerful souls love life. ~ Heinrich Heine

I know there are some people in Germany who become sick when they see these black uniforms, we understand the reason for this, and do not expect we shall be loved by all that number of people; those who come to fear us in any way or at any time must have a bad conscience towards the Fuhrer and the nation. For these persons we have established an organisation called the Security Service. ~ Heinrich Himmler

Proofs of the Euclidean [parallel] postulate can be developed to such an extent that apparently a mere trifle remains. But a careful analysis shows that in this seeming trifle lies the crux of the matter; usually it contains either the proposition that is being proved or a postulate equivalent to it. ~ Johann Heinrich Lambert

I am speaking, as I know it is rude to do, of the Social Darwinists, the eugenicists, the Imperialists, the Scientific Socialists who showed such firmness in reshaping civilization in Eastern Europe, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, and, yes, of the Nazis. Darwin influenced the nationalist writer Heinrich von Treitschke and the biologist Ernst Haeckel, who influenced Hitler and also the milieu in which he flourished. ~ Marilynne Robinson