Robert Musil - Soul Quotes

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We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul.

Robert Musil

For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

Robert Musil

There is nothing more deplorable than those skeptics and reformers, liberal priests and humanistically-oriented scholars, who moan about soullessness, barren materialism, what is unsatisfying in mere science, and the cold play of atoms, and renounce intellectual precision, which is for them only a slight temptation. Then, with the help of some alleged emotional knowledge to satisfy the feelings, and with the necessary harmony and rounding-out of the world picture, all they invent is some universal spirit: a world-soul, or a God, who is nothing more than the world of the academic petite bourgeoisie which gives rise to him; at best, an oversoul who reads the newspaper and demonstrates a certain appreciation of social questions.

Robert Musil

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.

Robert Musil

For the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.

Robert Musil