Saturday, November 6, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Robert Mathias Musil (November 6, 1880 - April 15, 1942), writer. He is best known for his long unfinished (3 volumes) novel The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), The work has oft been referred to as one of the most important modernist novels.

Here, once again is an author whose books were banned.

"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."
- Robert Musil

"Only in the most unusual cases is it useful to determine whether a book is good or bad; for it is just as rare for it to be one or the other. It is usually both."
- Robert Musil

"To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying."
- Robert Musil

" Each person is a graveyard of his thoughts. They are most beautiful for us in the moment of their birth; later we can often sense a deep pain that they leave us indifferent where earlier they enchanted us."
- Robert Musil

"Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop."
- Robert Musil

Musil image source (1)

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