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The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Je weiter ich lebe, desto nötiger scheint es mir, auszuhalten, das ganze Diktat des Daseins bis zum Schluss nachzuschreiben; denn es möchte sein, dass erst der letzte Satz jenes kleine, vielleicht unscheinbare Wort enthält, durch welches alles mühsam Erlernte und Unbegriffene sich gegen einen herrlichen Sinn hinüberkehrt.

Original text (German)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Letter to Ilse Erdmann, 21 December 1913, in Letters on Life, U. Baer, trans. (2007)

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Age

More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

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The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them.

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I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rainer Maria Rilke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.