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Robert Musil Quotes - Page 4

All Quotes Art Feelings Giving Life Lying Quality Reality Soul Stupidity
But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

Robert Musil
Mother, Book, Writing

It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.

Robert Musil
Men, Average, Ideas
Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.18, Pan Macmillan

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.

Robert Musil
Life, Determination, Intellectual
Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.34, University of Chicago Press

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.

Robert Musil
Lying, Intellectual, Analogies
Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.42, University of Chicago Press

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

Robert Musil
Book, Reading, Perspective

It is, all in all, a historic error to believe that the master makes the school; the students make it!

Robert Musil
Believe, School, Errors

Have we not huddled in bunkers, while some premonition of tomorrow hung in the air and a comrade started singing? Oh, it felt so melancholy! And it was kitsch.

Robert Musil
Air, Singing, Kitsch

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