Robert Musil Quotes - Page 3

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Wordsworth's particular grace, his charisma, as theologians say, has been granted in equal measure to so very few men since time was--to Plato and who else?
The crucial thing is never what we do, but always what we do right after that. What matters is always the next step!

Robert Musil

Plato, Men, What Matters

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That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.

Robert Musil

People, Voting, Democracy

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We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one's big and second toes; there's work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving.

Robert Musil

Dream, Moving, Reality

Robert Musil, Sophie Wilkins (1996). “The Man Without Qualities”, Vintage

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the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress

Robert Musil

Spiritual, Intellectual, Progress

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.23, University of Chicago Press

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You proclaim that one should die for the highest virtues, because you take it for granted that nobody's been living for them, not even for a single hour.

Robert Musil

Virtue, Granted, Hours

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An impractical man--which he not only seems to be, but really is--will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea.

Robert Musil

Mean, Men, Ideas

Robert Musil (2017). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.12, Pan Macmillan

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It is life that does the thinking all around us, forming with playful ease the connections our reason can only laboriously patch together piecemeal, and never to such kaleidoscopic effect.

Robert Musil

Thinking, Together, Connections

Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.411, Pan Macmillan

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The proverbial notion of historical distance consists in our having lost ninety-five of every hundred original facts, so the remaining ones can be arranged however one likes.

Robert Musil

Distance, Historical, Likes

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.117, University of Chicago Press

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What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.

Robert Musil

Cutting, Feelings, Generations

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Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.

Robert Musil

Depression, Strong, Emotional

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.11, University of Chicago Press

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There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses [....] The truth by comparison, has only one appearance and only one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

Robert Musil

Ideas, Stupidity, Use

Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.60, Pan Macmillan

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All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!

Robert Musil

Men, Together, World

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... all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods.

Robert Musil

Dream, Woods, Hunters

Robert Musil (1961). “The Man Without Qualities”

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We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.

Robert Musil

Flower, Hands, Understanding

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It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.

Robert Musil

Men, Average, Ideas

Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.18, Pan Macmillan

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Hardly anyone still reads nowadays. People make use of the writer only in order to work off their own excess energy on him in a perverse manner, in the form of agreement or disagreement.

Robert Musil

Agreement, Order, People

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Every day there comes a moment when a person lays his hands in his lap and all his busyness collapses like ashes. The work accomplished is, from the soul's point of view, entirely imaginary.

Robert Musil

Views, Hands, Soul

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.153, University of Chicago Press

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It was the tenderness mingled with melancholy which we bring to a time that belongs irrevocably to the past, when a pale, delicate shadow rises from it bearing the lilies of the dead, and in it we find a forgotten likeness to ourselves. And that faint, wistful shadow, that pale scent, seemed to vanish away into a wide, full, warm stream - the life that now lay open before him.

Robert Musil

Past, Delicate Life, Shadow

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You see how wrong I go, how ridiculous I'm making myself in your eyes by keeping on guessing wrong like this! Doesn't that help you to come out with it? Come on now!

Robert Musil

Eye, Guessing, Ridiculous

Robert Musil, Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser (1986). “Five Women”, p.76, David R. Godine Publisher

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The thoughts of my emotionally so disturbed days must be found again, shifted and developed further. Here and there something of the loose remarks I make must be used, but only when it finds my attention again.

Robert Musil

Here And There, Attention, Used

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What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the world, but when we do, we become as still as a picture.

Robert Musil

Use, World, Want

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Is not art a tool we employ to peel the kitsch off life? Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?

Robert Musil

Art, Air, Tools

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... nothing is more human than substituting the quantity of words and actions for their character. But using imprecise words is very similar to using lots of words, for the more imprecise a word is, the greater the area it covers.

Robert Musil

Character, Talking, Stupidity

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.280, University of Chicago Press

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... the genius never makes anything new, but always something that is just different, and the average talents provide him the possibility within which his genius condenses into achievements.

Robert Musil

Average, Achievement, Different

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.33, University of Chicago Press

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... the structure of a page of good prose is, analyzed logically, not something frozen but the vibrating of a bridge, which changes with every step one takes on it.

Robert Musil

Bridges, Frozen, Pages

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.79, University of Chicago Press

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Born: November 6, 1880
Died: April 15, 1942
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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