It is vain futility to describe the way you smile; it is mere impossibility to speak at all when you are around. I don’t dare breathe. Keep smiling. I don’t dare move at all. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; 2nd edition December 15, 1996) Advertisements
But the constellation of his future love has long been moving among the stars. What terror will tear his heart out of the track of its fleeing to place it in perfect submission, under the calm influence of the heavens? —Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Duration of Childhood,” The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
You are the second one amidst your loneliness, the quiet center of each monologue: and any circle drawn round you exceeds the tent of time. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Book of the Monkish Life,” First Book; The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, trans. Annemarie S. Kidder (Northwestern University Press, 2001)
He who hears butterflies laugh knows what clouds taste of He will discover the night in the moonlight, unhindered by fear. He will become the plant, if he wishes, the animal, the fool, the sage He will travel the universe within one hour. He knows that he knows nothing, like all the others, too. Only… Continue reading Novalis
There is hope, but not for us. — Franz Kafka
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness. — Franz Kafka
Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine. , the wound was not blossoming… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
