Quotes from Robert Walser

Artists, as a rule, understand nothing about business, or, for some reason or other, they aren't allowed to understand anything about it.

Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls —Robert Walser. A German-speaking Swiss writer, Walser is understood to be the missing link between Kleist and Kafka. Confined to a sanatorium in Herisau, Switzerland, he used to write 'micrograms', (undecipherable short texts handwritten in a nano text-size) and take long walks. On the 25th of December 1956 he was found, dead of a heart attack, in a field of snow.

Is it our calling to understand each other, or are we not, rather, called upon to misjudge one another, to prevent there being a surfeit of happiness and to ensure that happiness continues to be valued, and that these circumstances result in novels, which could not possibly exist if we all knew each other for what we are

Thank you very much," said I cold-bloodedly, left the book, which had been most absolutely widely distributed because it had unconditionally to have been read, as I chose, where it was, and softly withdrew, without wasting another word. "Uncultivated and ignorant man!" shouted the bookseller after me, for he was most justifiably and deeply vexed.

There are little books we read as if we're eating something delicious. We quickly forget them. After a certain amount of time, perhaps we recall them again. They're Like people we're capable of loving because they're not difficult.

En la continua necesidad de goce y prueba de cosas siempre nuevas se me antoja un rasgo de pequeñez, falta de vida interior, alejamiento de la Naturaleza y mediana o defectuosa capacidad de comprensión. Es a los niños pequeños a los que siempre hay que mostrarles algo nuevo y distinto para que no estén descontentos.

Seria correcto decir que el viento caminaba? No era una figura ni tenia piernas. Yo no lo veia, sólo lo percibia gracias a la sensación, es decir lo notaba y lo dejaba actuar sobre mi. El se alejaba para soplar de nuevo.

Qué desapasionado, prosaicamente práctico, noblemente soso es nuestro tiempo. Aunque tal vez tenga también su lado bueno: uno puede distinguirse por su extravagancia.

It's gradually becoming "serious," my situation, I realize this.

Se aburren quienes se pasan la vida esperando que algo los estimule desde fuera...

My love of humankind will be agreeably balanced with mercantile rationality on the scales of salesmanship.

cuando se es joven hay que ser un cero a la izquierda, pues no existe nada más perjudicial que destacar pronto, prematuramente, en cualquier cosa.

See how in the middle of winter love is radiant, brightness smiles, warmth shines, tenderness twinkles, and the glow of all that may be hoped for, all kindness, comes toward you.

I already said loud and clear that today I'm apparently a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and okay a bit hoo-hoo and maybe also a little wee-oo wee-oo. Is that so terrible?

The blood that soils your body becomes stars ...

In the forest you pray involuntarily.

I don't want to go running down some career path—supposedly such a grand enterprise. What's so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you!

For it was inevitable that something a person was fond of, something he felt bound and conjoined to, would cause him distress as well: he would have to struggle with it, there would be much about it that displeased him, and at times he would even hate it because he had always felt so powerfully drawn to it.

Today I told myself that in actual fact anyone who takes an innocuous and random delight in his life is an absolute lummox.

That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.

I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.

Ultimately, the most romantic thing is the heart, and every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls.

One is always half mad when one is shy of people.

How small life is here and how big nothingness. The sky, tired of light, has given everything to the snow. The two trees bow their heads to each other. Clouds cross the world's silence in a circle dance