If my devils are to leave me, I'm afraid my angels will take flight as well.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complex relationship between our struggles and our strengths.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote suggests that our challenges and darker aspects of life are intricately linked to our positive qualities and inspirations. The fear of losing one's faults or 'devils' implies a worry that the accompanying 'angels,' representing our virtues, creativity, or joy, may also vanish. This highlights the notion that our personal struggles often coexist with our capacities for beauty and enlightenment; one cannot exist without the other.
In practice
In a discussion on the balance of life's challenges, this quote can illustrate that our difficulties often bring out our best qualities.
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
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.
The body is a reservoir of all sorts of tensions and dark forces. And it's also the potential source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other.
Implosion is no invention in the conventional sense, but rather the renaissance of ancient knowledge, lost over the course of time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.