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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

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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
Distance
Remaining
However
Ninety
Hundred
Consists
Ones
Originals
Five
Original
Lost
Likes
Facts
Historical
Proverbial
Every
Notion
Arranged

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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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Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.
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There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
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Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.
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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.
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the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress
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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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One does what one is one becomes what one does.
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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.
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A man can't be angry at his own time without suffering some damage.
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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?
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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?
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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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I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another, where all actions proceed from a very personal state of excitement. Where actions have meanings, not just causes. And where a person, to use a trivial word, is happy, and not just nervously tormenting himself.
Robert Musil
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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.
Robert Musil
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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
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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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... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.
Robert Musil
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[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.
Robert Musil
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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