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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the transient nature of human effort and the often illusory feeling of accomplishment.
Robert Musil's quote emphasizes the inevitability of moments of stillness in our busy lives, where we confront the emptiness of our accomplishments. It suggests that, at some point, we may realize that our relentless striving and productivity are ultimately insignificant from a deeper, soulful perspective, revealing a contrast between external busyness and internal fulfillment.
In practice
In a seminar about work-life balance, this quote could be used to illustrate the importance of finding stillness.
What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.
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.
Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.
On this thin, scarcely real and yet so perceptible sensation the whole world hung as on a faintly trembling axis, and this in turn rested on the two people in the room.
The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.
Time, which runs through the world like an endless tinsel thread, seemed to pass through the centre of this room and through the centre of these people and suddenly to pause and petrify, stiff, still and glittering... and the objects in the room drew a little closer together.
This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
An opponent is entitled to the same regard for his principles as we would expect others to have for ours. Non-violence demands that we should see every opportunity to win over opponents.
Faith is the champion of Grace, and Love the nurse; but Humility is the beauty of Grace.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Conflict, of course, comes about because of the misuse of power and the clash of ideals, not to mention the inflammatory activities of unscrupulous and bigoted leaders. But it also arises, tragically, from an inability to understand and from the powerful emotions which, out of misunderstanding, lead to distrust and fear.
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