Robert Musil Quotes

Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul

With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. ... As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit.

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.

Somebody once said it's the SOUL that matters

Too soon did the doctors of the church forget that the heart--the moral nature--was the beginning and the end, and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.

There's something I believe wholeheartedly: Cynicism is the true refuge of the pseudo-intellectual, .. Cynicism is easy. Joy is an extremely advanced spiritual and intellectual tenet.

Faith is mind at its best, its bravest, and its fiercest. Faith is thought become poetry, and absorbing into itself the soul's great, passions. Faith is intellect carried up to its transfigurement.

Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.

You came so that you could learn about your dreams," said the old woman. "And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.

What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.

You won't find God at the Seminary and you won't find wisdom in the halls of intellectualism.

All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life's situations.

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled.

Because the Soul is not made of matter, since it is spiritual, it cannot obey the laws of matter, it cannot be judged by the laws of matter.

Spiritual Intelligence represents our drive for meaning and connection with the infinite.

Three things differentiate living from the soul verses living from the ego only: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time.

We must go beyond the intellect and find recourse in pure intelligence, which is spirit and movement.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

There is a universal intelligence that we call God or Soul or Spirit or Consciousness, and it is everywhere and in all things.

Emotions are messengers that carry information. Spiritual growth depends upon receiving that information & using it.