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
The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.
One day/_x000D_ One day I waited for myself/_x000D_ I said to myself Guillaume it's time you came/_x000D_ So I could know just who I am/_x000D_ I who know others.
I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.
Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?
I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.
"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.