“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Rainer Maria Rilke 176

Austrian poet and writer 1875–1926

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“You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

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“I loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet's tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

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“America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.”

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“Indeed, the direction of the future is only there in order to elude us.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

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“The point now before us is a settled case, and therefore there is no need to enter into arguments about it.”

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“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

Anatole France book The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c'est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.
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“Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself.”

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“The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save more blood in the future”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

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Context: Cuba and Algeria are the most recent examples of the effects of armed struggle on the development of social transformation. If we conclude that the possibility of the peaceful road is almost nonexistent in the Americas, we can point out that it is very probable that the outcome of victorious revolutions in this area of the world will produce regimes of a socialist structure. Rivers of blood will flow before this is achieved... The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save more blood in the future.

“Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

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“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

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Rainer Maria Rilke 176

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