I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. (Dover Publications May 8, 2002) Originally published 1929.
this much belongs to us, to touch each other thus; the gods can grip us more forcefully. The choice is theirs. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Second Elegy,” Duino Elegies, transl. by Edward Snow (North Point Press, 2001)
I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther. (Weygand’sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 29 September 1774, revised ed. 1787)
You 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! –… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
If desire seizes directly upon its object, contemplation removes its object to a distance, and makes it into a true and inalienable possession by putting it beyond the reach of passion. — Friedrich von Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform December 10, 2015)
I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going. ― Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, (Harper Perennial; Reprint edition September 20, 2011)
