Quote

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

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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
Art
Ultimate
Shows
Value
Mean
Side
Conquering
Something
Sides
Shaken
Things
Seen
Opens
Love
Values
Conquer
Means
Suddenly
Artist
Lack

More quotes by Robert Musil

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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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True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.
Robert Musil
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Life is to blame for everything.
Robert Musil
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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
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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.
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.
Robert Musil
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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.
Robert Musil
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One does what one is one becomes what one does.
Robert Musil
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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
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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.
Robert Musil
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Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
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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Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?
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
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the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress
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.
Robert Musil
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For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.
Robert Musil
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... 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
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One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.
Robert Musil
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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.
Robert Musil