"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

12 November 2016

Rejoice.

Courbet, Branch of Apple Blossoms, 1873


So it comes to pass that most people don't know at all how beautiful the world is and how much splendor is revealed in the smallest things, in some flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, or a birch leaf. Grown-up people, who have business and cares and worry about a lot of trifles, gradually lose their eye entirely for  these riches which children, when they are alert and good children, soon notice and love with all their hearts. And yet the finest thing would be if all people would always stay in this relationship like alert and good children, with simple and reverent feelings, and if they would not lose the power to rejoice as deeply in a birch leaf or in the feather of a peacock or the pinion of a hooded crow as in a great mountain range or a splendid palace. The small is as little small as the big is big. There is a great and eternal beauty throughout the world, and it is scattered justly over the small things and the big; for in the important and essential, there is no injustice on the whole earth. 

Rainer Maria Rilke

No comments: