If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our accomplishments are often superficial and lack authenticity.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote reflects on the nature of human accomplishments, asserting that they are often veiled in pretense and do not allow for genuine expression. It points out that for individuals facing the end of life, the insincerity permeating societal achievements becomes glaringly apparent, revealing a profound truth about the struggle for authenticity in a world full of façades.
In practice
In a memorial speech reflecting on a person's life choices.
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
One hurries through, even though there's time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbulent alley is too confusedly the present.
I don't care what color you are, what size you are, where you're from. It is disturbing that there's an idea that only tall, thin, willowy, size 0 women are attractive - even for the tall, thin, willowy, size 0 woman! We all should get to feel like there's something powerful and beautiful about who we are.
Other people's lives come at us without a backstory most of the time. The present is like that.
The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.
Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.
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