Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that even the most frightening things may be vulnerable and require our compassion.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote highlights the idea that fear and terror often mask deeper vulnerabilities. It implies that rather than reacting with fear or hostility to what we find terrifying, we should seek to understand and respond with empathy to the underlying helplessness that may exist beneath the surface.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one might mention this quote to encourage understanding towards those who experience fear.
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
All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.
It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century.
Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas - of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.
Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.
The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.
Intelligence must follow faith, never precede it, and never destroy it.
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