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Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.
Robert Musil
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Robert Musil
Age: 61 †
Born: 1880
Born: November 6
Died: 1942
Died: April 15
Author
Engineer
Essayist
Librarian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Celovec
Forms
Otherwise
Surface
Form
Pulsing
Things
Pounding
Life
Acts
Skin
Skins
More quotes by Robert Musil
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
...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
Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.
Robert Musil
Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?
Robert Musil
The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.
Robert Musil
One does what one is one becomes what one does.
Robert Musil
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
... 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
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
[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.
Robert Musil
Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.
Robert Musil
Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.
Robert Musil
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
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
... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.
Robert Musil
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
... 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
Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
Robert Musil
A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity may become a writer but what should a man do who wants something in between?
Robert Musil
... 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
