List of Robert Musil Quotes

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.

Every Day There Comes A Moment When A Person Lays His Hands In His Lap And All His Busyness Collapses Like Ashes. The Work Accomplished Is, From The Soul's Point Of View, Entirely Imaginary.

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.

It Is, All In All, A Historic Error To Believe That The Master Makes The School; The Students Make It!

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.

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.

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.

But How Do I Get To Having To Write A Book?... It Was A Mother Who Bore Me, Not An Inkwell!

There Is Nothing In This World As Invisible As A Monument

The Proverbial Notion Of Historical Distance Consists In Our Having Lost Ninety-five Of Every Hundred Original Facts, So The Remaining Ones Can Be Arranged However One Likes.

... The Structure Of A Page Of Good Prose Is, Analyzed Logically, Not Something Frozen But The Vibrating Of A Bridge, Which Changes With Every Step One Takes On It.

... The Genius Never Makes Anything New, But Always Something That Is Just Different, And The Average Talents Provide Him The Possibility Within Which His Genius Condenses Into Achievements.