Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by it’s seriousness. Give me your hand. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Go To the Limits of Your Longing,” The Book of Hours: Love… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
I would describe myself like a landscape I’ve studied at length, in detail; like a word I am coming to understand; like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime; like my mother’s face; like a ship that’s carried me when the waters raged. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Book of Monastic Life,” Rilke’s book… Continue reading Rainer Maria Rilke
In a dream–in the last dream of the morning, I stood in the foothills today–beyond the world, held scales, and weighed the world. ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (Penguin Books; Later Printing edition March 30, 1978) Originally published 1883.
Choose love! Choose love! Enter the rose garden, let your soul make peace with the thorns. — Rumi, The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication. (Inner Traditions; Tra edition, February 14, 2006)
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. — Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies. (Chatto & Windus; Collected ed edition, December 1949) Originally published 1927.
Ah, the sun will catch me, in my disturbing transparency. What am I but an awareness of the dark, forever? — Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions I. Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop. (Wesleyan; Rev. ed. Trans. from the French edition, September 15, 1991) Originally published 1963.
Man cannot sprout wings unless he has first reached the brink of the abyss! — ― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ. (Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition March 1, 1998) Originally published 1952.
