How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?
Interpretation
The quote reflects a struggle for individuality and transcendence in relationships.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote captures the tension between personal identity and the impact that others have on our inner selves. It expresses a desire to protect one's soul from being influenced or diminished by external relationships while seeking a higher connection to other realms of existence.
In practice
During a deep conversation about inner peace at a retreat, this quote can illustrate the struggle of maintaining personal boundaries.
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
Harlem is not a playground for rich bankers and consultants. It's got students of all colors. It's got old people who keep history and tell tall tales.
The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action'; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different.
Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
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