Robert Musil Quotes

Quotes about:

• And what would you do, ... if you could rule the world for a day? I suppose I would have no choice but to abolish reality.

  Robert Musil

  Reality, Choices, World

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.292, Pan Macmillan

  60 Copy quote

• Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

  Robert Musil

  Hands, Clothes, Stupidity

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.284, University of Chicago Press

  26 Copy quote

• One does what one is; one becomes what one does.

  Robert Musil

  Doe

  30 Copy quote

• If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.

  Robert Musil

  Reality, Possibility, Ifs

  Robert Musil (2017). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

  28 Copy quote

• The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mentall illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one.

  Robert Musil

  Differences, Healthy, Facts

  23 Copy quote

• ...love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet.

  Robert Musil

  Religious, Feet, People

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.30, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

  Robert Musil

  Skins, Form, Surface

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.245, Pan Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• Each person is a graveyard of his thoughts. They are most beautiful for us in the moment of their birth; later we can often sense a deep pain that they leave us indifferent where earlier they enchanted us.

  Robert Musil

  Beautiful, Pain, Birth

  11 Copy quote

• ... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.

  Robert Musil

  Children, Ocean, Bridges

  6 Copy quote

• Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.

  Robert Musil

  Progress, Would Be, Wonderful

  26 Copy quote

• Layer by layer art strips life bare.

  Robert Musil

  Art, Layers

  Robert Musil (2012). “Posthumous Papers of a Living Author”, p.44, Archipelago

  36 Copy quote

• Life is to blame for everything.

  Robert Musil

  Blame, Life Is

  Robert Musil (2012). “Posthumous Papers of a Living Author”, p.45, Archipelago

  15 Copy quote

• The thought is not something that observes an inner event, but, rather it is this inner event itself. We do not reflect on something, but, rather, something thinks itself in us.

  Robert Musil

  Thinking, Events

  25 Copy quote

• ... we engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist from a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don't live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others. This is their silent community of interests.

  Robert Musil

  Party, Ideas, Community

  9 Copy quote

• ... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

  Robert Musil

  Life, World, Emotion

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.88, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

  Robert Musil

  Army, People, World

  13 Copy quote

• True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.

  Robert Musil

  People, Decision, True And False

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.891, Pan Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

  Robert Musil

  Fire, Soul, Sparks

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.189, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

  Robert Musil

  Age, Baseness, Conform

  26 Copy quote

• The thought came to me that all one loves in art becomes beautiful. Beauty is nothing but the expression of the fact that something is being loved. Only thus could she be defined.

  Robert Musil

  Beautiful, Art, Expression

  16 Copy quote

• We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

  Robert Musil

  Soul, Littles, Matter

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.131, University of Chicago Press

  9 Copy quote

• The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.

  Robert Musil

  Fall, Learning, Pockets

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.535, Pan Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• ... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

  Robert Musil

  Numbers, People, Temptation

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.274, University of Chicago Press

  23 Copy quote

• Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?

  Robert Musil

  Art, Mean, Perfect

  "The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic".

  8 Copy quote

• Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn't take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.

  Robert Musil

  Lying, Taken, Decay

  7 Copy quote

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