But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell! Robert Musil More Quotes by Robert Musil More Quotes From Robert Musil Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art? Robert Musil perfect mean art Time, which runs through the world like an endless tinsel thread, seemed to pass through the centre of this room and through the centre of these people and suddenly to pause and petrify, stiff, still and glittering... and the objects in the room drew a little closer together. Robert Musil together running people And since the possession of qualities presupposes that one takes a certain pleasure in their reality, all this gives us a glimpse of how it may all of a sudden happen to someone who cannot summon up any sense of reality — even in relation to himself — that one day he appears to himself as a man without qualities. Robert Musil giving men reality A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses. Robert Musil stupid men mean and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn. Robert Musil religious struggle night I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but also that what one might say against it is false. Despite this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it, changes its form, and becomes more and more firm. Robert Musil stuff might lying 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 average men ideas 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 With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. ... As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit. Robert Musil limits feelings thinking Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life. Robert Musil determination intellectual life Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression. Robert Musil endure impression sacrifice It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it. Robert Musil ethos would-be reality ... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both. Robert Musil emotion life world 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 ridiculous guessing eye It is, all in all, a historic error to believe that the master makes the school; the students make it! Robert Musil errors believe school His answers were quite often like that. When she spoke of beauty, he spoke of the fatty tissue supporting the epidermis. When she mentioned love, he responded with the statistical curve that indicates the automatic rise and fall in the annual birthrate. When she spoke of the great figures in art, he traced the chain of borrowings that links these figures to one another. Robert Musil curves art fall Have we not huddled in bunkers, while some premonition of tomorrow hung in the air and a comrade started singing? Oh, it felt so melancholy! And it was kitsch. Robert Musil kitsch singing air To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying. Robert Musil sides mean art 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 delicate-life shadow past 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 used attention
