Quotes from Robert Musil

Moral war für ihn weder Botmäßigkeit, noch Gedankenweisheit, sondern das unendliche Ganze der Möglichkeiten zu leben.

Das ganze Zeitalter betet das Geld, die Ordnung, das Wissen, Rechnen, Messen und Wägen, alles in allem also den Geist des Geldes und seiner Verwandten an und beklagt es zugleich.

We don't have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

È la realtà che risveglia le possibilità, e nulla sarebbe così assurdo come negarlo. Tuttavia, sommate o in media, quelle che restano sono sempre le stesse possibilità destinate a ripetersi, finché non arriva un uomo per il quale una cosa reale non è più importante di una solo pensata. È grazie a lui che le nuove possibilità acquistano finalmente il loro senso e la loro determinazione, ed è lui che le risveglia

e presto o tardi sorger un'epoca di ovvio cameratismo sessuale, in cui ragazzi e ragazze in concordia discorde staranno davanti a un cumulo di vecchie molle spezzate che prima costituivano l'uomo e la donna!

Progress would be wonderful — if only it would stop.

Când iubeÅŸti, totul este iubire, chiar ÅŸi atunci când e suferin?? ÅŸi repulsie.

Isn't it greatly in my favor that I don't belong here but in jail?

Once a human being is mistrusted, the plaimest signs of faithfulness will positively turn into signs of unfaithfulness. On the other hand, where there is trust, the most glaring evidence of unfaithfulmess will seem to be signs of misunderstood faithfulness, crying like a child that the grown-ups have locked out. Nothing could be interpreted on its own merits alone, one thing depended on the other, one had to trust or mistrust the whole of it, love it or take it for deceit and delusion.

There's no longer a whole man confronting a whole world, only a human something moving about in a general cultural-medium.

At this point he quit, right in the middle of an important and promising piece of work. He now saw his colleagues partly as relentless, obsessive public prosecutors and security chiefs of logic, and partly as opium eaters, addicts of some strange pale drug that filled their world with visions of numbers and abstract relations. God help me, he thought, surely I never could have meant to spend all my life as a mathematician?

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

A man of knowledge knows that nothing is true and that the whole truth will be revealed only at the end of time. Science is amoral. All our glorious thrusting of ourselves into the Unknown gets us out of the habit of being personally concerned with our conscience; in fact, it doesn't even give us the satisfaction of taking our conscience entirely seriously.

The body of reality is always richer than the mere outline sketch we call principles.

Via?a obi?nuit? este o stare intermediar? alc?tuit? din toate crimele de care suntem capabili.

A person never finds himself a total coward, because if something frightens him he runs just far enough away to consider himself a hero again!

Love dissolves truth like wine the pearl.

Der Zug der Zeit ist ein Zug, der seine Schienen vor sich her rollt. Der Fluß der Zeit ist ein Fluß, der seine Ufer mitführt.

A]lles ist moralisch, aber die Moral selbst ist nicht moralisch!

Talent should not imply a need for great exertion. =

Qué endeble es la concepción del mundo con que la gente se contenta...

Whoever cannot say "Yes" to life should at least utter the "No" of the saint.

In love everything is love, even pain and revulsion.

Tra gli uomini, i freddi calcolatori non hanno nella vita nemmeno la metà del successo dei temperamenti equilibrati, che provano davvero un profondo attaccamento per le persone e le relazioni che recano loro vantaggio