The Nature and Substance of a Great Idea

For what distinguishes an overwhelmingly great idea from an ordinary, perhaps even incomprehensibly ordinary and mistaken one, is the fact that it is in a kind of molten state, as a result of which the ego enters into infinite expanses and the expanses of the universe enter into the ego, whereby it ceases to be possible to recognise what belongs to oneself and what to the infinite. Hence overwhelmingly great ideas consist of a body, which, like the human body, is compact but perishable, and of an eternal soul, which is what lends them their significance, but which is not compact—on the contrary, at every attempt to get hold of it in cold words it evaporates into nothingness.

Robert Musil | The Man Without Qualities.