Quote

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?

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
Tool
Clearer
Abstract
Layer
Tools
Employ
Air
Farther
Gets
Bare
Becomes
Removed
Peel
Art
Transparent
Strips
Life
Layers
Kitsch

More quotes by 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.
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There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
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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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One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.
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Have we not huddled in bunkers, while some premonition of tomorrow hung in the air and a comrade started singing? Oh, it felt so melancholy! And it was kitsch.
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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.
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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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Life is to blame for everything.
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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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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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[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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!
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Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
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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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