the misfortunes of being nice (in the archaic sense)

If now the element under observation is exactitude itself, if one isolates it and allows it to develop, if one regards it as an intellectual habit and a way of living and lets it exert its exemplary influence on everything that comes into contact with it, the logical conclusion is a human being with the paradoxical combination of precision and indefiniteness. He possesses an incorruptible, deliberate cold-bloodedness, the temperament that goes with exactitude; but apart from and beyond this quality, all is indefinite.

- Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities