Rainer Maria Rilke

For our part, when we feel, we evaporate; ah, we breatheourselves out and away; with each new heartfirewe give off a fainter scent. True, someone may tell us:you're in my blood, this room, Spring itselfis filled with you . . . To what end? He can't hold us,we vanish within him and around him.

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

We want it visible to showwhen even the most visible joy will reveal itselfonly when we have transformed it within.There’s nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within.

Now we wake up with our memoryand fix our gazes on that which was;whispering sweetness, which once coursed through us,sits silently beside us with loosened hair.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

For sometime now I have believed that it is our own force, all our own force that is still too great for us. It is true that we do not know it; but is it not just that which is most our own of which we know the least?

Then suddenly you’re left all alonewith your body that can’t love youand your will that can’t save you.