Otto Quotes
The time is getting closer for you to be coming [to Paula, in Paris]. Now I must ask you for your sake and mine, please spare both of us this time of trial. Let me go, Otto Otto Modersohn. I do not want you as my husband.... accept this fact; don't torture yourself any longer.
Paula Modersohn-Becker
This past summer I realized that I am not the sort of woman to stand alone in life. Apart from the eternal worries about money, it is precisely the freedom I have had which was able to lure me away from myself. I would so much like to get to the point where I can create something that is me. It is up to the future to determine for us whether I'm acting bravely or not. The main thing now is peace and quiet for my work, and I have that most of all when I am at Otto Modersohn's side.
Paula Modersohn-Becker
I must learn how to express the gentle vibration of things, their roughened textures, their intricacies. I have to find an expression for that in my drawing, too, in the way I sketched my nudes here in Paris, only more original, more subtly observed. The strange quality of expectation that hovers over muted things [skin, Otto's Otto Modersohn forehead, fabrics, flowers]; I must try to get hold of the great and simple beauty of all that. In general, I must strive for the utmost simplicity united with the most intimate power of observation. That's where greatness lies.
Paula Modersohn-Becker
The review was more a satisfaction to me than a joy. Joy, overpoweringly beautiful moments, comes to an artist without other noticing. The same is true for moments of sadness. That's why it is true that artists live mostly in solitude... Otto [Modersohn] and I shall be coming home [ Worpswede ] again in the spring. That man is touching in his love. We are going to try to buy the Brünjes place in order to make our lives together freer and more open... If the dear Lord will allow me once again to create something beautiful, then I shall be happy and satisfied; if only I have a place where I can work in peace. I will be grateful for the portion of love I've received. If one can remain healthy and not die too young..
Paula Modersohn-Becker
![.. you [Otto] know me well enough to know that I am not bad and heartless. It just happen to be a 'Sturm und Drang' period which I have to get through, and there is no way to avoid hurting the people closest to me. It hurts me to cause you all this pain and suffering. Believe me when I say it is not easy for me either. But I must fight it through, to one exit or another – It has begun to be really beautiful here... I've seen wonderful Courbet's. I am sorry that he is now the latest mode. I think he is greater than either Manet or Monet. There was a colossal still life [of Courbet] with hollyhocks, in every conceivable colour, with a female figure in it. It was magnificently painted... Stay close to Elsbeth and to your art.. (Paula Modersohn-Becker)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/83/paula-modersohn-becker-art-453083.webp)
Dear Rainer Maria Rilke
I thank you for saying that you rather like my painting of 'the little child'... You have brought me the first touch of Paris with this phrase of yours about 'liking and approving', and that alone is a great deal... Will I be seeing you here [in Worpswede] before I leave? I really hope not. The ground is burning a little beneath my feet... And now, I don't even know how I should sign my name. I'm not Modersohn, but I'm no longer Paula Becker anymore either [because she was married with Otto Modersohn, but is now leaving him]. I am Me, and I hope to become Me more and more. That is surely the goal of all our struggles... I am now leaving Friday night and shal arrive in Paris on Saturday. Write a line to 29 Rue Cassette, where I plan to stay..
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Evil flourishes best in disguise,” said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent.
"And the best disguise is simple” said the youth, Federit Shaus. "Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism.”
"You're a cynic, lad,” von Bek smiled at him. "But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries ‘my country right or wrong', and I'll show you one who'd cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.
Michael Moorcock
"Postscript: It's a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old's Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the center of the earth... Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the center of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?
Halldór Laxness
How shall we define a god? Expressed in psychological terms (which are primary-there is no getting behind them) a god is something that gives us the peculiar kind of feeling which Professor Otto has called "numinous". Numinous feelings are the original god-stuff from which the theory-making mind extracts the individualised gods of the pantheon.
Aldous Huxley
Moreover I want to tell Dr. Süßheim -- who wants to portray every anti-Semite as a psychopath -- about his racial fellow Dr. Otto Weininger, who as an honest Jew wrote down his thoughts in the book "Sex and Character":
"Jewry seems to be somewhat anthropologically related to the Negroes and the Mongolians. To the Negro points the readily curling hair, to an admixture of Mongolian blood points the very Chinese or Malayan formed skull, that one finds so often among Jews, which matches the usually yellowish complexion ... The fact that excellent men have almost always been anti-Semites (Tacitus, Pascal, Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Jean Paul, Schopenhauer, Grillparzer, Richard Wagner) can be explained in the following way: they, who have so much more in their own nature than other men, can also better understand Jewry."
Julius Streicher
One channel for transmitting Communist models to the Nazi movement were right-wing intellectuals with a left-wing bent close to Hitler, known as the ‘National Bolsheviks.' Their chief theoreticians, Joseph Goebbels and Otto Strasser, greatly impressed by Bolshevik successes in Russia, wanted Germany to help Soviet Russia build up her economy in return for her political support against France and England.
Richard Pipes
The cottage had twenty beds, a telephone and a refrigerator. Everything was kept spick and span, and every minute details of our comforts had been attended to. Two stewards were there to look after us. One was Otto, an old seasoned-sailor who had visited India several times and spoke English well. The other was named Schimdt, and he spoke English haltingly.
Dhyan Chand
The first encounter with Otto Mueller's paintings was in Berlin, at the showing of the 'Rejects of the Berlin Secession'. which took place at the Galerie Macht in the spring of 1910. And we met him personally the very same day in his studio on Mommsenstrasse. This meeting was significant for all of us and occurred at a fruitful moment; and, as a matter of course, he belonged to Die Brücke community from then on.
Erich Heckel