You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.
Interpretation
The quote critiques living a life of insincerity and artificiality.
This quote by Thomas Bernhard highlights the concept of living inauthentically, where one's existence is marked by pretense rather than genuine experiences and emotions. It suggests that many people engage in a simulated life that lacks true meaning and authenticity, ultimately challenging them to reflect on the nature of their own existence and the importance of being true to oneself.
In practice
A motivational speaker could use this quote to encourage individuals to embrace their true selves.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.
Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.
I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.
We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.
Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.
I've tried them all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.
The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.
A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take; _x000D_ For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.
The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.
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