I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our perception shapes reality and that we have the power to influence our world.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote reflects the philosophical idea that our understanding and perception play a pivotal role in the creation of our experiences. By stating that nothing has ever been real without being beheld, Rilke emphasizes the interconnectedness of the observer and the observed, suggesting that reality is not merely a given but something that is actively shaped by our awareness and engagement with it.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality, this quote can illustrate how perception shapes our existence.
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
War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished.
This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness...they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.
Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.
The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it
Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.
What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.