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.
Represent to yourself a dark city all burning and stinking with fire and brimstone. The damned are in the depth of hell within this woful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments in all their senses and members. Consider above all the eternity of their pains, which above all things makes hell intolerable.
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.
Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
Anything that is western origin, first you verify it, then accept it. Anything that is Indian origin, first accept it, then verify it if necessary.
Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.
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