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Robert Musil

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Famous Robert Musil Quotes

“and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn.”

DoeSoulSeemsTodayFormNightLostReligiousStruggleDoubtBirdConceptsFundamentalsComplexesInsightResistanceNakedBitterBrandsErasDawnEngagedReasoningImmenseExpansionMysticTheologicalPrimalPrevailingRationalismReligious ExperienceFaith BasedSeizures
Author:Robert Musil
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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.”

MenMeanLongIdeasSeemsActionTogetherFineUnpredictableUnreliableDealings
Book:The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic
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“His answers were quite often like that. When she spoke of beauty, he spoke of the fatty tissue supporting the epidermis. When she mentioned love, he responded with the statistical curve that indicates the automatic rise and fall in the annual birthrate. When she spoke of the great figures in art, he traced the chain of borrowings that links these figures to one another.”

ArtFallAnswersFiguresChainsSpokesLinksCurvesBorrowingTissuesAnnualsRise And FallFatty
Book:The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic
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“Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.”

KnowsPersonsDoeLanguageStrongChancePoorBehindsQualityEmotionalDepressionLosingCome UpHatedFallenMusclesBloodyBeatenCatastropheTremblingDregsStrong EmotionalDeep Depression
Book:Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses
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