After a spent day, Walked back in a fever. The whole way home the sun touched my cheeks. The blissful evening glow spread across the meadowland I called this light the blood I shed. My hot burning blood lay consoling the entire world. So I walked with pride--Now that all was tilled. I didn't know what was happening, I leaned against a fence post, in my blood that covered the meadows near and far.

— Robert Walser

Ah, I believe Coach. 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 people. Well, Coach will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Coach is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Coach are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Coach. He’s a child, and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashing and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Coach should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Coach I’m the true blue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. Or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.

— Robert Walser

And the pine trees that smell so wonderfully of spicy power. Shall I never see a mountain pine again? Really that would be no misfortune. To forgo something: that also has its fragrance and its power.

— Robert Walser

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

— Robert Walser

Cuando sees oven hay Que SER un hero a la inquired, puts no exist NASA MAS prejudicial Que despair pronto, prematuramente, en qualifier cost.

— Robert Walser

Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamin to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things.

— Robert Walser

God goes with thoughtless people.

— Robert Walser

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 sort, and that’s all he requires, for every life promises a great deal and is replete with possibilities enchantingly fulfilled.

— Robert Walser

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 produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these to constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present

— Robert Walser

How small life is Harald how big nothingness. The sky, tired of light, has given everything to the snow. The two trees bow their heads to each other. Clouds cross the world’silence in a circle dance

— Robert Walser