Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.
Rainer Maria RilkeReligion is something infinitely simple, ingenuous. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling... it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.
Rainer Maria RilkeMy life is not this steeply sloping hour, in which you see me hurrying. Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree; I am only one of my many mouths, and at that, the one that will be still the soonest. I am the rest between two notes, which are somehow always in discord because Deathโs note wants to climb overโ but in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling. And the song goes on, beautiful.
Rainer Maria RilkeSomewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.
Rainer Maria RilkeMay I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine yearโ; not only a seasonโ: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.
Rainer Maria Rilke