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date: 01 December 2023

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875–1926
German poet 

  1. So leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied.
     
    We live our lives, for ever taking leave.
     
    Duineser Elegien (tr. J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender, 1948) no. 8
  2. A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.
    Letters to a Young Poet (1929) 17 February 1903 (tr. R. Snell)
  3. Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
    Letters to a Young Poet (1929) 14 May 1904 (tr. Hugh MacLennan)
  4. What we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us.
    Letters to a Young Poet (1929) 12 August 1904 (tr. S. Mitchell)
  5. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
    letter to Paula Modersohn-Becker, 12 February 1902, in Gesammelte Briefe (1904) vol. 1