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.
He had tenderness in his heart — ‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it meant to live.We don't know how to live,therefore we don't know how to die
By all that is sacred in our hope for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system!
Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
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