Robert Walser (writer) Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.

Robert Walser
Listening to music, I always have exactly the same feeling: something's missing. Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wish to investigate it.

Robert Walser
Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!... You have been my body's health. Whenever I have read a book, it was you I was reading, not the book, you were the book. You were, you were.

Robert Walser
Questions are usually more beautiful, more significant than their resolutions, which in fact never resolve them, are never sufficient to satisfy us, whereas from a question streams a wonderful fragrance.

Robert Walser
Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls

Robert Walser
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.

Robert Walser
Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another's loneliness strange.

Robert Walser
When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm, it's easy to stay silent.

Robert Walser
It doesn't take much to show love, but at some time or another in your, praise God, disastrous life you must have felt, honestly and simply, what love is and how love likes to behave.

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

Robert Walser
With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.

Robert Walser
At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

Robert Walser
I'd like to die listening to a piece of music. I imagine this as so easy, so natural, but naturally it's quite impossible. Notes stab too softly. The wounds they leave behind may smart, but they don't fester. Melancholy and pain trickle out instead of blood. When the notes cease, all is peaceful within me again.

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

Robert Walser