studying in spacee

“It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like a grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness. The oblique drops of rain slid down the blades of grass in the park, but it would have made no difference if they had slid up. Then the oblique (drops) turned round (drops), swallowed up by the earth underpinning the grass, and the grass and the earth seemed to talk, no, not talk, argue, their comprehensible words like crystallized spiderwebs or the briefest crystallized vomitings, a barely audible rustling, as if instead of drinking tea that afternoon, Norton had drunk a steaming cup of peyote.”

“At evening, with the sun no longer overhead, the air developed a kind of viscosity in which time seemed to stand very still and the labyrinth of the city, no longer bisected by light and shade and unstirred by the afternoon breezes, appeared suspended in a kind of dream, paused in an atmosphere of extraordinary pallor and thickness.”

“We have, each of us, certain charged stories or referents, the sorts of stories we tell those people we wish to befriend, so that they will see what has formed us. What is odd is that, over time, the same story can be used to make different points, though we may continue to befriend the same sorts of attractive strangers.”

. . . perhaps the same

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

“It’s become very apparent to me that the older you are the less praise you’re going to get. When you’re 3 and you paint a picture outside the lines, they give you gold stars. When you’re 10 and you score a goal, they take you out for ice-cream. But when you’re 17 and struggling to fit in, no one gives you a hug just for making it through the day. And when you’re 23 and pulling long hours at the office, no one asks if you’re alright. And you start to wonder if you are, if there’s a point to any of it. The answer is yes. Because good work, real good work that shapes your character, doesn’t need to be acknowledged. You grow in the silences, in the reflections, in the inhales and exhales that let you know you’ve made it from one moment to the other.”

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Immensely bitter that if you search for Rainer Maria Rilke on this website you mainly get the same handful of quotes and very few actual full poems. Which is a massive shame considering the works of Rilke are some of the most beautiful words every put together and you can't possibly get the entire sense of what he can do based on just a few lines.

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

“By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.”