Robert Musil

Robert Musil
Robert Musilwas an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel The Man Without Qualitiesis generally considered to be one of the most important and influential modernist novels...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth6 November 1880
CountryAustria
life world emotion
... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.
men together world
All still lifes are actually paintings of the world on the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were alone together, without man!
use world want
What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the world, but when we do, we become as still as a picture.
army people world
Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.
world invisible this-world
There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument
reality choices world
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.
clearly felt usual
Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need.
hung people rested scarcely sensation trembling turn
On this thin, scarcely real and yet so perceptible sensation the whole world hung as on a faintly trembling axis, and this in turn rested on the two people in the room.
views hands soul
Every day there comes a moment when a person lays his hands in his lap and all his busyness collapses like ashes. The work accomplished is, from the soul's point of view, entirely imaginary.
brain want fairytale
Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.
lying might stuff
I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but also that what one might say against it is false. Despite this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it, changes its form, and becomes more and more firm.
spiritual intellectual progress
the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress
lying intellectual analogies
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.
mean men ideas
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.