Quotes About Time

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world. Perhaps I can never achieve the last, but that will be my attempt. I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.

so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

How much there is to suffer. When was time enough to pay attention to our lighter emotions? And still I recognize, better than most others who will be resurrected, what blessedness is.

No, my life is not this precipitous hour through which you see me passing at a run.

I learn it daily, learn it with painto which I am grateful: patience is everything! (Letter Three).

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. (Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht. Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter, daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.)

IMPERMANENCE Driftsand of the hours. Quietly disappearing, continuously, even the happily consecrated design. Life blows away, always: pillars already rise without connection, carrying nothing but empty air.

The natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights... Everything is a gestation and then bringing forth.

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!

What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people. Rilke, Rainer Maria (1993-09-17). Letters to a Young Poet (p. 22). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

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

Each time we cast our view toward distances that have not yet been touched, we transform not only the present moment and the one following but also alter the past within us.

Préfères-tu, rose, être l'ardente compagne de nos transports présents? Est-ce les souvenir qui davantage te gagne lorsqu'un bonheur se reprend? Tant de fois je t'ai vue, heureuse et sèche, - chaque pétale un linceul - dans un coffret odorant, à côté d'une mèche, ou dans un livre aimé qu'on relira seul.

She followed slowly and she needed time, as though some long ascent were not yet by; and yet: as though, when she had ceased to climb, she would no longer merely walk, but fly.

How we squander our hours of pain. How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end. Though they are really our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen, one season in our inner year—, not only a season in time—, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil and home.

I'm still alive, I have time to build My blood will outlast the rose.

The trees which you planted as a child Have long since grown too heavy; you do not deceive them. But the winds ... but the spaces ... Raise no monument. For it is the roses Which salute Him year by year with their petals. This, you see, is Orpheus

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.

But this press of time—take it as a little thing next to what endures. All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we tarry do we touch the holy.

O tempo não é uma medida. Um ano não conta, dez anos não representam nada. Ser artista não significa contar, é crescer como a árvore que não apressa a sua seiva e resiste, serena, aos grandes ventos da primavera, sem temer que o verão possa não vir. O verão há de vir. Mas só vem para aqueles que sabem esperar, tão sossegados como se tivessem na frente a eternidade.

like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow.

Though he works and worries, the farmer never reaches down to where the seed turns into summer. The earth grants.

The future stands firm... but we move in infinite space.

Une rose seule, c'est toutes les roses et celle-ci: l'irremplaçable, le parfait, le souple vocable encadré par le texte des choses. Comment jamais dire sans elle ce que furent nos espérances, et les tendres intermittences, dans la partance continuelle.