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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!

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
Bore
Bores
Write
Mother
Book
Writing

More quotes by 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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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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One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.
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Life is to blame for everything.
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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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the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress
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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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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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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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... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.
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... all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods.
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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.
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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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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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Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?
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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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One does what one is one becomes what one does.
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Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression.
Robert Musil
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Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.
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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