Mediocrity

"A young man with an active mind," Ulrich reflected, "is constantly sending out ideas in every direction. But only those that find resonance in his environment will be reflected back to him and consolidate, while all the other dispatches are scattered in space and lost!"...And so Ulrich felt that what he had just thought was not entirely without significance. For if, in the course of time, commonplace and impersonal ideas are automatically reinforced while unusual ideas fade away, so that almost everyone, with a mechanical certainty, is bound to become increasingly mediocre, this explains why, despite the thousandfold possiblities available to everyone, the average human being is in fact average."

Robert Musil, "The Man Without Qualities"

My Soul

The most peculiar of all the peculiarities of the word "soul", however, is that young people cannot pronounce it without laughing. Even Diotima and Arnheim were shy of using it without a modifier, for it is still possible to speak of having a great, noble, craven, daring, or debased soul, but to come right out with "my soul" is something one simply cannot bring oneself to do. It is distinctinly an older person's word, and this can only be understood by assuming that in the course of life people become more and more aware of something for which they urgently need a name they cannot find until they finally resort, reluctantly, to the name they had originally despised.

-Robert Musil "The Man Without Qualities"