Quote of the Day (7/7/11) (Rainer Maria Rilke)

They (mankind) fall over themselves in their eagerness to make this world, which we should trust and delight in, evil and worthless and so they deliver the earth more and more into the hands of those who are prepared to wring at least a quick profit out of it. . . . The increasing exploitation of life today, is it not due to a continuous disparagement of this world, begun centuries ago? What madness to divert our thoughts to a beyond, when we are surrounded here by tasks and expectations and futures! What a swindle to steal pictures of earthly bliss in order to sell them to heaven behind our backs! Oh, it is high time that the impoverished earth got back all those loans from its happiness with which men have endowed the hereafter. . . . And, there being no such thing as a vacuum, is not the place of everything removed from here taken by a counterfeit is that why our cities are so full of ugly artificial light and noise, because we have surrendered the true brightness and song to a Jerusalem which we hope to move into presently?
--Rainer Maria Rilke