The closer to paradise...

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

—Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

What a Real Living Human Being is Made Of

Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men--each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature--are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

--Hermann Hesse, Demian (1925)

'the subtle enmity of fame'

Young man anywhere, in whom something stirs that makes you shiver, profit by the fact that no one knows you. And if they contradict you who hold you of no account, and if they give you up entirely whom you frequent, and if they would extirpate you because of your precious thoughts—what is this obvious danger, which holds you concentrated within yourself, against the subtle enmity of fame, later, which renders you innocuous by scattering you?

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) (trans. M.D. Herter Norton 1949)

What all the years?

Perhaps it is new, our surviving these: the year and love. Blossoms and fruit are ripe when they fall; animals are self-aware and find each other and are content with this. But we, who have undertaken God, can never finish. We keep putting off our nature, we need more time. What is a year to us? What all the years? Before we have even begun God, we are already praying to him: let us survive this night. And then the being ill. And then love.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) (trans. M.D. Herter Norton 1949)

'we have become accustomed to lesser things'

Sometimes I reflect on how heaven came to be and death: through our having distanced what is most precious to us, because there was still so much to do beforehand and because it was not secure with us busy people. Now times have elapsed over this, and we have become accustomed to lesser things. We no longer recognize that which is our own and are terrified by its extreme greatness. May that not be?

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) (trans. M.D. Herter Norton 1949)

'infinite distances continue to exist'

A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, 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 and against a wide sky!

—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter dated Aug. 17, 1901, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: Volume 1, 1892–1910 (trans. Greene & Norton 1945)

'stand guard over the solitude of the other'

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter dated Feb. 12, 1902, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: Volume 1, 1892–1910 (trans. Greene & Norton 1945)