A Hidden Life Quotes

Lorenz Schwaninger: [Talking to his daughter Fani, who is also Franz Jägerstätter's wife, about Franz's imprisonment and the resultant mistreatment that the family is facing] Better to suffer injustice than to do it.

Closing Title Card: ...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. -George Eliot

Ohlendorf - The Painter: What we do, is just create... sympathy. We create-- We create admirers. We don't create followers. Christ's life is a demand. You don't want to be reminded of it. So we don't have to see what happens to the truth. A darker time is coming... when men will be more clever. They won't fight the truth, they'll just ignore it. I paint their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head. How can I show what I haven't lived? Someday I might have the courage to venture, not yet. Someday I'll... I'll paint the true Christ.

Fr. Fürthauer: Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth? Could it possibly please God? He wants us to have peace, happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves.

Captain Herder: There's a difference between the kind of suffering we can't avoid and a suffering we choose.

Captain Herder: We all have blood on our hands. No one is innocent. Crying, bloodshed, everywhere. He who created this world. He created evil. Conscious makes cowards of us all. Take care, my friend. The Antichrist is clever. He uses a man's virtues to mislead him.

Prisoner: Your God has no pity. He left us. Abandoned us. Like he did your Christ, His son.

Franz Jägerstätter: What comes next is seldom better.

Franz Jägerstätter: They seem to have more freedom, and to know more of peace and happiness, though they are only unreasoning animals, than we humans do. We who have the gift of understanding.

Waldland: The sun shines on good and evil the same.

Waldland: The more in chains the madder.

Waldland: I wish I'd had a wife. And a farm. And apple trees, and a cherry tree. And... Maybe some grapes. We should do our own wine: white wine and red wine. When red wine for the winter, and white wine for the summer.

Fr. Fürthauer: God doesn't care what you say. Only what's in your heart

Fani Jägerstätter: You said knock - it will be opened. Ask - it will be given.

Title Card: During World War II, every Austrian soldier called up for active duty was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.

Mayor Kraus: This is what happens when a world dies. Men survive. But their life is gone. Their life is gone! Their reason for living.

Franz Jägerstätter: [interal monologue] Once you never forgave anyone... judged people without mercy. Now you see your own weakness... so you can understand the weakness of others.