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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

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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
Still
Claims
Provisionally
Thinking
Limits
Profundity
Soon
Exclusively
Hold
Boldness
Becomes
Originality
Feelings
Scientific
Spirit
Lays
Stills
Rational

More quotes by Robert Musil

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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.
Robert Musil
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Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
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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A man can't be angry at his own time without suffering some damage.
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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[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.
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 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
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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 nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
Robert Musil
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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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Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?
Robert Musil
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Wordsworth's particular grace, his charisma, as theologians say, has been granted in equal measure to so very few men since time was--to Plato and who else? The crucial thing is never what we do, but always what we do right after that. What matters is always the next step!
Robert Musil
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One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.
Robert Musil
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... 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
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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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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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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
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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.
Robert Musil