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
Shh! Listen! Someoneβs coming! I think β I think it might be us!
The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.
At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.
This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
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