Enchanted one: how can the harmony of two
Latin words ever attain the rhythm
that ripples through you like a promise.
From your brow rise leaf and lyre.

And all that is you turns to metaphor
in love poems whose phrases light
as rose petals remain in the expression
of one who, after reading, closes her eyes

to see you: almost in flight,
borne away in leaps that cease their springing
only when you stand stock still to listen;

as when a woman bathing in a woodland stream
pauses suddenly, and the water
mirrors her quick-turned face.

— Rilke, New Poems

In my glad hours, I will make a city of your smile, a distant city that shines and lives. I will take one word of yours to be an island on which birches stand, or fir trees, quite still and ceremonial. I will receive your glance as a fountain in which things can disappear and above which the sky trembles, both eager and afraid to fall in.

I will know that all of this exists, that one can enter this city, that I have glimpsed this island and know exactly when there is no one else beside that fountain. But if I appear to hesitate, it is because I am not sure whether it is the forest through which we are walking or my own mood that is shaded and dark.

Who knows: maybe Venice, too, is just a feeling.

— Rilke, Early Journals

Yes, Lord, you are completely innocent; how can You conceive Nothingness, You who are fullness itself? Your presence is light, and changes all into light; how are You to know the twilight of my heart?

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Nothing is richer than precious stones and than gold; nothing is finer than adamant, nothing nobler than the blood of kings; nothing is sacred in wars; nothing is greater than Socrates’ wisdom — indeed, by his own affirmation, nothing is Socrates’ wisdom.

— Jean Passerat

Nothing is the reward of good men who alone can pretend to taste it in long easy sleep, it is the meditation of the wise and the charm of happy dreamers. So excellent and final is it that I would here and now declare to you that Nothing was the gate of eternity, that by passing through Nothing we reached our every object as passionate and happy beings . . . indeed, indeed when I think what an Elixer is this Nothing I am for putting up a statue nowhere, on a pedestal that shall not exist, and for inscribing on it in letters that shall never be written:

TO NOTHING
THE HUMAN RACE IN GRATITUDE

— Hilaire Belloc

Dear Professor:

……In the end I would much rather be a Basel professor than God; but I have not dared push my private egoism so far as to desist for its sake from the creation of the world. You see, one must make sacrifices however and wherever one lives. . . .
.

— Letter from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jacob Burckhardt, January 6, 1989; it resulted in Nietzsche’s institutionalization

Oh, to what, then, can we turn
in our need?
Not to an angel. Not to a person.
Animals, perceptive as they are,
notice that we are not really at home
in this world of ours. Perhaps there is
a particular tree we see every day on the hillside,
or a street we have walked,
or the warped loyalty of habit
that does not abandon us.

Oh, and night, the night, when wind
hurls the universe at our faces.
For whom is night not there?

— Rilke, From the First Duino Elegy

He lives not in time but parallel to it, which is why it has never occurred to me to ask him what he thinks of events. He is one of those beings who make you realize that history is a dimension man could have done without.

— E. M. Cioran, on Samuel Beckett

These are nuts beyond my ability to crack.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

I’m interested in the superhero in real life, but not the comic book version. I’ve had some distancing thoughts about them recently. I’ve come to the conclusion that what superheroes might be — in their current incarnation, at least — is a symbol of American reluctance to involve themselves in any kind of conflict without massive tactical superiority. I think this is the same whether you have the advantage of carpet bombing from altitude or if you come from the planet Krypton as a baby and have increased powers in Earth’s lower gravity. That’s not what superheroes meant to me when I was a kid. To me, they represented a wellspring of the imagination. Superman had a dog in a cape! He had a city in a bottle! It was wonderful stuff for a seven-year-old boy to think about. But I suspect that a lot of superheroes now are basically about the unfair fight. You know: people wouldn’t bully me if I could turn into the Hulk.

— Alan Moore
courtesy of Sleepz and Thinkz

If your daily life seems of no account, don’t blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its treasures. For the creative artist there is no impoverishment and no worthless place.

— Rilke, Paris, February 17, 1903
Letters to a Young Poet

God, every night is hard.
Always there are some awake,
who turn, turn, and do not find you.
Don’t you hear them crying out
as they go farther and farther down?
Surely you hear them weep; for they are weeping.

I seek you, because they are passing
right by my door. Whom should I turn to,
if not the one whose darkness
is darker than night, the only one
who keeps vigil with no candle,
and is not afraid —
the deep one, whose being I trust,
for it breaks through the earth into trees,
and rises,
when I bow my head,
faint as fragrance
from the soil.

— Rilke, From The Book of Hours II, 3

Those who sense eternity are beyond all fear. They see in every night the place where day begins, and are consoled.

Fearlessness is necessary for summer to come. Spring can be troubled; to its blossoming, uneasiness is like a home. But fruits need the strength and calm of the sun. All must be ready to receive, with wide open gateways and substantial bridges.

A race that is born in fear comes as a stranger to the world and never finds its way home.

— Rilke, Early Journals

The lies we tell are like toys,
easy to break. Like gardens
where we play hide and seek,
and, in our excitement, make a sound
so people will know where to look.

You are the wind that catches our voice,
our own shadow grown longer.
You collection of lovely holes
in the sponge that we are.

— Rilke, Collected French Poems

I took off my coat and shoes, opened my trousers and got in between the sheets. It is lying down, in the warmth, in the gloom, that I best pierce the outer turmoil’s veil, discern my quarry, sense what course to follow, find peace in another’s ludicrous distress. Far from the world, its clamours, frenzies, bitterness and dingy light, I pass judgment on it and on those, like me, who are plunged in it beyond recall, and on him who has need of me to be delivered, who cannot deliver myself. All is dark, but with that simple darkness that follows like a balm upon the great dismemberings.

— Samuel Beckett, Molloy