Quotes

Rainer Maria Rilke - The Duino Elegies

For beauty is nothing but

the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,

and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains

to destroy us.

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Isn't it time that, loving,

we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured

as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight,

something more than itself? For staying is nowhere.

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Not that you could withstand

God's voice: far from it. But listen to the breath,

the unbroken message that creates itself from the silence.

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- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, The First Elegy