Quotessence
Home / Authors / Robert Musil
Robert Musil

Robert Musil Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenWorldFormPeopleSoulArtDoePersonsRealityReasonStillsActionGeniusIntellectualLifeWantAverageIdeasIfsLiterature

Famous Robert Musil Quotes

“…. by the time they have reached the middle of their life’s journey, few people remember how they have managed to arrive at themselves, at their amusements, their point of view, their wife, character, occupation and successes, but they cannot help feeling that not much is likely to change anymore. It might even be asserted that they have been cheated, for one can nowhere discover any sufficient reason for everything’s coming about as it has. It might just have well as turned out differently. The events of people’s lives have, after all, only to the last degree originated in them, having generally depended on all sorts of circumstances such as the moods, the life or death of quite different people, and have, as it were, only at the given point of time come hurrying towards them”

LifeAgeMusil
Book:The Man Without Qualities: Volume I
Create image

“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. Just as you leave things out of your dreams and fantasies. By leaving things out, we bring beauty and excitement into the world. We evidently handle our reality by effecting some sort of compromise with it, an in-between state where the emotions prevent each other from reaching their fullest intensity, graying the colors somewhat. Children who haven't yet reached that point of control are both happier and unhappier than adults who have. And yes, stupid people also leave things out, which is why ignorance is bliss. So I propose, to begin with, that we try to love each other as if we were characters in a novel who have met in the pages of a book. Let's in any case leave off all the fatty tissue that plumps up reality.”

LifeRealityInspirationLifestyleWorldviews
Book:The Man Without Qualities: Volume I
Create image

“I also believe that few people remain completely untouched by the thought that instead of the life they lead there might also be another, where all actions proceed from a very personal state of excitement. Where actions have meanings, not just causes. And where a person, to use a trivial word, is happy, and not just nervously tormenting himself.”

PeopleLifeBelievePersonsStatesUseMightActionHappinessCausesPerceptionExcitementLife Happiness
Book:Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses
Create image

“Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life.”

LifeDoeReasonMomentsMightInterestResultsOughtIntellectualConscienceAdvantageAreasDeterminationPrejudiceStrict
Book:Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses
Create image