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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

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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
Fields
Therein
Lies
Analogies
Intellectual
Mathematician
Ought
Lesson
Existence
Significant
Lying
Mathematics
Future
Field
Analogy
Lessons
Mathematicians

More quotes by Robert Musil

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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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There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
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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.
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All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!
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One does what one is one becomes what one does.
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Life is to blame for everything.
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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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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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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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Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
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Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.
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A man can't be angry at his own time without suffering some damage.
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... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.
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Each person is a graveyard of his thoughts. They are most beautiful for us in the moment of their birth later we can often sense a deep pain that they leave us indifferent where earlier they enchanted us.
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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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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.
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Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.
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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.
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But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!
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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.
Robert Musil