“Clothes, when abstracted from the flow of present time and their transmogrifying function on the human body, and seen as forms in themselves, are strange tubes and excrescences worthy of being classed with such facial decorations as the ring through the nose or the lip-stretching disk. But how enchanting they become when seen togetherwith the qualities they bestow on their wearer! What happens then is no less than the infusion, into some tangled lines on a piece of paper, of the meaning of a great word.” HumansBodyHappensFormLinesQualityPiecesStrangePaperClothesFlowFunctionLipsWorthyRingsNosesHuman BodyStretchingTubesDecorationTangledPresent TimeFacialEnchantingDiskInfusion Author:Robert Musil
“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.” MightFormLyingStuffOpinionCasesMiddleConvincedDespiteFirm Author:Robert Musil
“We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.” SometimesHandsFormUnderstandingGoneFlowerAmountGeniusRemainsInsightColourFlashFragrance Author:Robert Musil
“... the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.” ArtAgeFormLiteratureNovelIntellectual Book:Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses Source: Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses
“What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.” WayMadeFeelingsFormLife IsLanguageCuttingGenerationsReadyAssumingTongueSensationsDividedFormationMistrustSamenessRecurring Author:Robert Musil
“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.” IfsFormSkinsSurface Book:The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic Source: The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic
“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
“Hardly anyone still reads nowadays. People make use of the writer only in order to work off their own excess energy on him in a perverse manner, in the form of agreement or disagreement.” PeopleStillsUseFormOrderEnergyAgreementExcessDisagreement Author:Robert Musil
