No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you.
Rainer Maria RilkeYou darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world, for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone, and then no one outside learns of you. But the darkness pulls in everything: shapes and fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them! - powers and people - and it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights.
Rainer Maria RilkeFor bel.i.eve me, the more one is, the richer is all one experiences. And whoever wants to have deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.
Rainer Maria RilkeWe wasters of sorrows! How we stare away into sad endurance beyond them, trying to foresee their end! Whereas they are nothing else than our winter foliage, our sombre evergreen, one of the seasons of our interior year.
Rainer Maria Rilke