All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling β I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.
Interpretation
True companionship strengthens individual identities without losing oneself in the relationship.
Rainer Maria Rilke highlights the complexity of love and companionship, suggesting that the essence of healthy relationships lies in maintaining one's individuality. He argues that when individuals compromise their identities entirely for the sake of closeness, it can lead to vulnerability and instability, making genuine love a challenging endeavor that requires balance and self-awareness.
In practice
During a wedding toast, to emphasize the importance of individuality in marriage.
Spring has again returned. _x000D_ _x000D_ The Earth is like a child that knows many poems._x000D_ _x000D_ Many, O so many. For the hardship_x000D_ _x000D_ of such long learning she receives the prize._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ Strict was her teacher. _x000D_ _x000D_ The white in the old man's beard pleases us._x000D_ _x000D_ Now, what to call green, to call blue,_x000D_ _x000D_ we dare to ask: She knows, She knows!
Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.
a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.
The only journey is the one within.
And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been
Fathers and sons are much more considerate of one another than mothers and daughters.
If you want to connect with people who are in distress and great grief and scared, you need to do it in a certain way. I move kind of slow. I talk kind of slow. I let them know that I respect them.
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
Women absolutely deserve respect.
Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring.
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.
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