Quotes from book

Wonderful, Wonderful Times

“He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.”

“Nothing is natural, yet everything is as it is by nature.”

“In the old days people had no time to harm the environment because they were busy doing harm to themselves, in the War, for instance.”

“Time stands still for man and woman alike, it is a good moment, because Time usually makes everything worse, poor people grow old, rich people can buy a little time but they can'hold it up for good, it always catches up with them. In the last analysis, Time is democratic.”

“The most powerful urge known to Man is the urge to be free of manual labour. Any means that accomplishes that end is fine. Some people erroneously imagine that they have a birthright to non-manual work.”

“weak are defeated by the strong in the world of Nature. A reed by the north wind, for instance. And silence by the forest.”

“Death the Laveller annihilates all distinctions.”

“For the eyes are the mirror of the soul and ought to remain unscathed if at all possible. Otherwise people will suppose the soul is done for.”

“The poet is a king in his realm. His is empire of imagination, in which there are unlimited mansions.”

“The world would be a lot better off if it paid more attention to its philosophers and artists than to its own tiny egotistic spirit, which lacks an overview. People should place their belief in Beethoven and Socrates.”

“Stifter tells us that people are not free, that they are slaves to the laws of Nature. So you have to commit violent deeds (if you don’t have anyone to do other kinds of deeds with), actions that ordinary people would call crimes but which we define as the norm, though of course it is our norm and no that of the rest.”

“Every man would like to possess all the women in the world, but a woman only wants the man she loves and to whom she is faithful.”

“Work is not a constraint. Man's activity provides his true fulfilment. True fulfilment however, can only be achieved if one man is not another man's slave.”

“Murder and assault are not lunacy; they are the logical conclusions if you live a life without an assured financial foundation.”

“We are monsters, even if we disguise ourselves as ordinary people. We are the children of ordinary people but we are not content with that. Inwardly we are consumed with wickedness, outwardly we are grammar school pupils.”

“Rainer [protagonist in the novel], who is reading The Outsider by Camus, says he would like to put the hostility of the world behind him. Once your hope for something better is taken from you, then at last you have the present all in your hand. Then you yourself are reality. Others are extras. When Rainer contemplated san evening he says that evening is melancholy ceasefire where all life has come to and end.”

“In this new era, what sets you free is knowledge, not work.”

“In the case of a writer like Musil writing is often a graceful act, like a silvery fish leaping.”

“Money is unimportant, but it is reassuring to have it.”