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. — Robert Musil Copy Share Image
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… — Robert Musil Copy Share Image
“Everything we feel and do is somehow oriented "lifeward," and the least deviation away from this direction toward something beyond is difficult or alarming.… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“He was in that familiar state - not that the occasion mattered to seriously to him -- of incoherent ideas spreading outward without a… — Robert Musil Copy Share
It is life that does the thinking all around us, forming with playful ease the connections our reason can only laboriously patch together piecemeal,… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“What is it you do, then? I'll tell you: You leave out whatever doesn't suit you. As the author himself has done before you.… — Robert Musil Copy Share
and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of… — Robert Musil Copy Share
What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the… — Robert Musil Copy Share
That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“Ein Mann, der die Wahrheit will, wird Gelehrter; ein Mann, der seine Subjektivität spielen lassen will, wird vielleicht Schriftsteller; was aber soll ein Mann… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“For a long time now a hint of aversion had lain on everything he did and experienced, a shadow of impotence and loneliness, an… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference… — Robert Musil Copy Share
I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another,… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession either. Consider… — Robert Musil Copy Share
Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system. — Robert Musil Copy Share
“The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he encounters behaves… — Robert Musil Copy Share
“And so the mind or spirit is the great opportunist, itself impossible to pin down, take hold of, anywhere; one is tempted to believe… — Robert Musil Copy Share
