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Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite… — Rainer Maria Rilke

Letter

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1901
★ 6.8
Other tags relating to this quote
Topic
Connecting with others
Medium
Letter
Time
1901
Person
Rainer Maria Rilke
Provenance
Current citation
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910, translated by Jane B. Greene and M. D. Herter Norton. W. W. Norton & Company, 1969.
Original citation
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letter to Emanuel von Bodman. 17 Aug. 1901.

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The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time · 1922
Another quote aboutTopic·Connecting with others