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"And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own."
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"And now if you'll excuse me, I should like to finish my book, alone, without the presence of a single ringleted girl to disrupt me. If you should come for me at dinner and find me in my chair, gone to the angels at last, you shall know that I died alone, which is to say in a state of utter bliss."

"Solitude with God is a place for pregnancy."

"I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company."

"Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."

"There is a magic in walking alone, in thinking alone: If there is no one to contact you around, the universe starts contacting you!"

"A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it."
Explore more quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

"Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice."

"Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further."

"Long you must suffer, knowing not what,until suddenly out of spitefully chewed fruit your suffering's taste comes forth in you.Then you will love almost instantly what's tasted. No one will ever talk you out of it."

"I would like to sing someone to sleep,to sit beside someone and be there.I would like to rock you and sing softlyand go with you to and from sleep.I would like to be the one in the housewho knew: The night was cold.And I would like to listen in and listen outinto you, into the world, into the woods.The clocks shout to one another striking,and one sees to the bottom of time.And down below one last, strange man walks byand rouses a strange dog.And after that comes silence.I have laid my eyes upon you wide;and they hold you gently and let you gowhen something stirs in the dark."

"Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it."

"Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence. For beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear."

"But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother,stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.Not for your mouth, you who hold him now,did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.Do you really think your quiet footstepscould have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?True, you startled his heart; but older terrorsrushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.Call him . . . you'll never quite retrieve him from those dark consorts.Yes, he wants to, he escapes; relieved, he makes a homein your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself anew.But did he ever begin himself?"

"Whoever you are, go out into the evening,leaving your room, of which you know every bit;your house is the last before the infinite,whoever you are."
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