Robert Musil

“Everything we feel and do is somehow oriented "lifeward," and the least deviation away from this direction toward something beyond is difficult…

— Robert Musil

“He was in that familiar state - not that the occasion mattered to seriously to him -- of incoherent ideas spreading outward…

— Robert Musil

It is life that does the thinking all around us, forming with playful ease the connections our reason can only laboriously patch…

— Robert Musil

“What is it you do, then? I'll tell you: You leave out whatever doesn't suit you. As the author himself has done…

— Robert Musil

and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing…

— Robert Musil

What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really…

— Robert Musil

That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a…

— Robert Musil

“Ein Mann, der die Wahrheit will, wird Gelehrter; ein Mann, der seine Subjektivität spielen lassen will, wird vielleicht Schriftsteller; was aber soll…

— Robert Musil

“For a long time now a hint of aversion had lain on everything he did and experienced, a shadow of impotence and…

— Robert Musil

“All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful…

— Robert Musil

I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also…

— Robert Musil

“His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession…

— Robert Musil

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into…

— Robert Musil

“The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he…

— Robert Musil

“And so the mind or spirit is the great opportunist, itself impossible to pin down, take hold of, anywhere; one is tempted…

— Robert Musil

“For if one is partly insane, one is also, juridically, partly sane, and if one is partly sane one is at least…

— Robert Musil

... we engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our…

— Robert Musil

... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible…

— Robert Musil

And what would you do, ... if you could rule the world for a day? I suppose I would have no choice…

— Robert Musil

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses [....] The truth by comparison, has…

— Robert Musil

“A motorcyclist rode down the empty street, arms and legs rounded in an O, and came back up with the sound of…

— Robert Musil

“Things seemed to consist not of wood and stone but of some grandiose and infinitely tender immorality that, the moment it came…

— Robert Musil

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

— Robert Musil

... the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

— Robert Musil

The thoughts of my emotionally so disturbed days must be found again, shifted and developed further. Here and there something of the…

— Robert Musil