A Quote by Rainer Maria Rilke
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
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For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
Faith in Christ is able to endure doubts-it's able to endure temptations-bec ause it faces them, not because it pretends they're not there.
I know, that Rilke quote - "Beauty is the beginning of terror" - I think about that a lot. It's that realization that we are so small, and yet we are so large in our capacity to relate to the beauty of things.
Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.
There is a mental space that we consciously makes our way back to, and give honour to what has formed us in this mental homeland which we carry with us always. It is important not to try to annihilate it but to take your courage in your hands and go back, and then I think you can more easily make a new beginning. A lot of us would like to know how to do this.
Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.
lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief — a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.
Don’t worry. I won’t send you off without warning. Just stand there and be awed by my beauty. It’s the safest mode around me. (Savitar)
I was surprised at the silence and the absence of movement which our departure caused among the spectators, and believed them to be astonished and perhaps awed at the strange spectacle; they might well have reassured themselves. I was still gazing when M. Rozier cried to me - "You are doing nothing, and the balloon is scarcely rising a fathom."
What can separate us from the love of God? Not life, not death, nothing in the present, nothing in the future. Not angels, not demons nothing is able to stand between us and his loving plans because you can't stop them.
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
Indeed, beauty is one of mankind's greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness.
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