Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn’t take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.
ATTRIBUTION:
Robert Musil (1880–1942), Austrian author. Ulrich to his sister Agathe, in The Man Without Qualities, book II, ch. 11, Gesammelte Werke in Neun Banden [Collected Works in Nine Volumes], ed. Adolf Frise, trans. by Donald C. Riechel, Rowohlt (1978).
