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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the delicate balance of existence and the profound influence that relationships have on our perception of reality.
Robert Musil's quote suggests that the entire world is suspended on a fragile sense of reality, closely tied to the connection between two individuals. It emphasizes how interpersonal relationships can shape our understanding of the world, implying that our experiences and perceptions are often contingent upon the bonds we share with others.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on how relationships shape our understanding of life.
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.
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.
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.
We have to get out of this mindset that the rich will do the business and the poor will have the charity.
The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.
I feel as if I am an ad for the sale of a haunted house: 18 rooms $37,000 I’m yours ghosts and all.
It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.
The way to God is the opposite to that of the world. And to few, very few, are given to have God and mammon at the same time.
The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.
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