Die Schwärmer Quotes

“You proclaim that one should die for the highest virtues, because you
take it for granted that nobody's been living for them, not even for a
single hour.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer

“When one's married for so long, always walking on four feet and always
breathing double breaths and thinking every thought twice through and
the time between the main things is packed double full with minor
details - then, sometimes, naturally, one yearns like an arrow for one
whole space thin as air. And you start up in the night, terrified by
your own breathing, which had just been going along as evenly without
you. But you don't rise up free - or even really as far as your knees
- not once. You strike a match. And there's one of you right there,
wrapped in flesh. Only then is it love.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer

“Whether you look at no men at all, or look at every single one - it
comes to the same thing. You can throw yourself at their hearts,
because you've gone mad from being always a stranger; from not being
able to understand how you can even bear to hold their hands in your
own any longer than you have to.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer

“Augen sind Hände, die man lebenslang nicht wäscht; so behalten sie die schmutzige Gewohnheit, alles anzurühren.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer

“The world seems almost physically wider when up to just now the
right-hand side was always obscured by the proximity of someone else;
and all of a sudden you stand there, astonished, in a wide
semi-circle: alone.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer

“Jeder Mensch kommt auf die Welt mit Kräften für die unerhörtesten Erlebnisse. Die Gesetze binden ihn nicht. Aber dann lässt ihn das Leben immer zwischen zwei Möglichkeiten wählen, und immer fühlt er: eine ist nicht darunter; immer eine, die unerfundene dritte Möglichkeit. Und man tut alles, was man will, und hat nie getan, was man gewollt hat. Schließlich wird man talentlos.”
― Robert Musil, Die Schwärmer