Robert Musil Quotes

Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.

We deserve each other, Luis … and I need you just as much as you need me. Hold me.” He steps closer, but hesitates. “If I do, mi chava, I can’t promise I’ll be able to let you go.

Oh, the miraculous energy that flows between two people who care enough to get beyond surfaces and games, who are willing to take the risks of being totally open, of listening, of responding with the whole heart. How much we can do for each other.

I've always had an enormous sense of independence. But I know that sometimes I can be too independent. It is important to be able to share your life - so that is a work in progress for me.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

I think as humans we do want to control our relationships, and you can't. It's probably better that you can't. That wouldn't be a real relationship, and we'd never learn and grow.

No one person is an island.

We are each other's magnitude and bond.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.

Enchanted partnership begins with the conscious understanding, on the part of two people, that the purpose of their relationship is not so much material as spiritual, and the internal skills demanded by it are prodigious.

Everybody is someone else's instrument.

Independence ... is middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

I need them as much as they need me.

Most people are embarrassed to admit there's another human being that's in control of them, that your heart beats three times as fast because you've given yourself to someone else.

We live in a society where individual effort and progress is valued, and that's absolutely correct and is as it should be. But we also are interdependent creatures. We can't succeed solely on our own.

Building a cast is a card house. They lean on each other, provide for each other, and take from each other.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

Who can be sure that Jean Valjean had not been on the verge of losing heart and giving up the struggle? In loving he recovered his strength. But the truth is that he was no less vulnerable than Cosette. He protected her and she sustained him. Thanks to him she could go forward into life, and thanks to her he could continue virtous. He was the child's support and she his mainstay. Sublime, unfathomable marvel of the balance of destiny!

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The Welfare of Each of Us Is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us

No man is born unto himself alone; Who lives unto himself, he lives to none.

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic.