Quote

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

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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
Together
Endless
Pause
Still
Seemed
Drew
Littles
Pass
Pauses
Little
Objects
Centre
Time
Room
Thread
Tinsel
Like
Rooms
Runs
Glittering
World
Running
Closer
Stiff
People
Stills
Suddenly
Glitter

More quotes by Robert Musil

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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.
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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.
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In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson ... of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.
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Mathematics is the source of a wicked intellect that, while making man the lord of the earth, also makes him the slave of the machine.
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There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
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One does what one is one becomes what one does.
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Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.
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Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.
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Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.
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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.
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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.
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...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.
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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.
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Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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... 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.
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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.
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Ideology is: intellectual ordering of the feelings an objective connection among them that makes the subjective connection easier.
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