Quotes About Existence

Das ist die Sehnsucht: wohnen im Gewoge und keine Heimat haben in der Zeit. Und das sind Wünsche: leise Dialoge täglicher Stunden mit der Ewigkeit.

If the confident animal coming toward us had a mind like ours, the change in him would startle us. But to him his own being is endless, undefined, and without regard for his condition: clear, like his eyes. Where we see future, he sees all, and himself in all, made whole for always.

which so incorruptibly reduced a reality to its color content that it resumed a new existence in a beyond of color, without any previous memories.

What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it, but longing to degrade not even death; we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends, to feel its hands about us like a friend's.

Nothing could be less conducive to reaching an art-work than critical remarks:it's always simply a matter of more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Everything cannot be so easily grasped and conveyed as we are generally led to believe; most events are unconveyable and come to pass in a space that no word has ever penetrated; more unconveyable than all else are art-works, whose mysterious existences, whose lives run alongside ours, which perishes, whereas theirs endure.

Besser vielleicht, du wärest in der Dunkelheit geblieben und dein unabgegrenztes Herz hätte versucht, all des Ununterscheidbaren schweres Herz zu sein.

The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense.

Being dead filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, she could not understand that it had happened.

Truly being here is glorious.

Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over - one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood. Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.

Angels (it is said) are often never quite sure whether they pass among the living or the dead.

Death is great. We are his completely with laughing eyes. When we feel ourselves immersed in life, he dares to weep immersed in us. (Der Tod ist groß. Wir sind die Seinen lachenden Munds. Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen, wagt er zu weinen mitten in uns.)

All who seek you test you. And those who find you bind you to image and gesture. I would rather sense you as the earth senses you. In my ripening ripens what you are. I need from you no tricks to prove you exist. Time, I know, is other than you. No miracles, please. Just let your laws become clearer from generation to generation.

Seulement la terre qui obéit, sait bien qu'elle tourne en rond, tandis que nous vers l'infini nous précipitons. Translation: But the obedient Earth well knows that she moves round and round, whereas we hurtle down toward infinity.

Things are not as easy to understand and say as we might prefer to believe; most events are inexpressible, happening in a space where no word has ever set foot, and most inexpressible of all are works of art, mysterious existences, whose life continues as ours passes away.

think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.

but there is a great deal of beauty here, because there is beauty everywhere.

The main thing was to be living. That was the main thing.

Verweilung, auch am Verstrautesten nicht, ist uns gegeben

There is nothing less apt to touch a work of art than critical words: all we end up with there is more or less felicitous misunderstandings. Things are not all as graspable and sayable as on the whole we are led to believe; most events are unsayable of all are works of art, mysterious existences whose life endures alongside ours, which passes away.

Das Kunstwerk möchte man also erklären: als ein tiefinneres Geständnis, das unter dem Vorwand einer Erinnerung, einer Erfahrung oder eines Ereignisses sich ausgiebt und, losgelöst von seinem Urheber, allein bestehen kann. Diese Selbständigkeit des Kunstwerkes ist die Schönheit. Mit jedem Kunstwerke kommt ein Neues, ein Ding mehr in die Welt.

Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you. (Letters on Life)