Category Archives: Wise Words
Wise Words on Friendship from C.S. Lewis
Wise Words from John Lennon
Wise Words from Ray Bradbury
Wise Words from Emily Dickinson
The Sun Never Says
Wise Words from Charles Dickens
Wise Words: Have a Good Day
Wise Words from Virginia Woolf
Wise Words from Paul Coelho
Rainer Maria Rilke: Thoughts on Marriage
I recently read Letters to a Young Poet, by the Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, and found it full of warmth and wisdom. IÂ was particularly touched by his thoughts on marriage that were included in one of the ten letters he wrote the young poet. After 52 years of marriage, I thought he eloquently expressed our own truth.
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.