If my devils are to leave me, I'm afraid my angels will take flight as well.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complex relationship between our struggles and our strengths.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote suggests that our challenges and darker aspects of life are intricately linked to our positive qualities and inspirations. The fear of losing one's faults or 'devils' implies a worry that the accompanying 'angels,' representing our virtues, creativity, or joy, may also vanish. This highlights the notion that our personal struggles often coexist with our capacities for beauty and enlightenment; one cannot exist without the other.
In practice
In a discussion on the balance of life's challenges, this quote can illustrate that our difficulties often bring out our best qualities.
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
A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanctions policy that kills one and a half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most.
It is not God's fault. It is our fault that we suffer. Whatever we sow we reap.
Talk of mysteries! β Think of our life in nature, β daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, β rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
What we want is to be real. Let us not appear to be more than we are. Don't let us put on any cant, any assumed humility, but let us be real; that is the delight of God. God wants us to be real men and women, and if we profess to be what we are not, God knows all about us. God hates sham.
Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.
Kindness is not an illusion and violence is not a rule. The true resting state of human affairs is not represented by a man hacking his neighbor into pieces with a machete. That is a sick aberration. No, the true state of human affairs is life as it ought to be lived.
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