Quotes by Robert Walser

“The barber's assistant asks if I am a Swede. An American? Not that either. A Russian? Well, then, what are you? I love to answer such nationalistically tinted questions with a steely silence, and t...”

“Your very eyes. How they have always been for me the command to obey, the inviolable and beautiful commandment. No, no, I'm not telling lies. Your appearance in the doorway!...You have been my body...”

“What we understand and love understands and loves us also.”

“You do see me crossing the meadowstiff and dead from the mist?I long for that home,that home I've never had,and without any hopethat I'll ever be able to reach it.For such a home, never touched,I c...”

“On the whole I consider the constant need for delight and diversion in completely new things to be a sign of pettiness, lack of inner life, of estrangement from nature, and of a mediocre or defecti...”

“They should not clench their fists,its my longing thats drawing me near to them;they should not stand there full of rage,my longing is timidly drawing near to them;they should not be ready to pounc...”

“Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamenta to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the m...”

“cuando se es joven hay que ser un cero a la izquierda, pues no existe nada más perjudicial que destacar pronto, prematuramente, en cualquier cosa.”

“One listens to the murmur of the soul only because of boredom.”

“Artists, as a rule, understand nothing about business, or, for some reason or other, they aren’t allowed to understand anything about it.”

“How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least pro...”

“I feel how little it concerns me, everything that’s called "the world," and how grand and exciting what I privately call the world is to me.”

“I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.”

“He doesn’t see his path clearly, but also doesn’t consider this absolutely necessary; he strikes out in some direction or other, and one thing leads to the next. All paths lead to lives of some sor...”

“The soul of the world had opened and I fantasized that everything wicked, distressing and painful was on the point of vanishing...all notion of the future paled and the past dissolved. In the glowi...”

“Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive peop...”

“They should not clench their fists,it’s my longing that’s drawing me near to them;they should not stand there full of rage,my longing is timidly drawing near to them;they should not be ready to pou...”