Quote(s) of the day

I missed the S-Bahn tonight by 2 minutes and I was hanging round the bookshop on Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to kill 18 minutes or so. I saw this on a postcard they were selling.

From Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 to 1926), one of the best known German language poets of his era - you would have to be a poet to come up with this, so it calls for a graphic!

Deutsch

"Es gibt Augenblicke in deren eine Rose wichtiger ist als ein Stück Brot"

That will appeal to all the romantics in you, it will certainly appeal to my wife!

Oh you want the English (I always forget that not everyone speaks German! The next US President can't, but at least he can manage French, at least he can today, he will probably rewind the tape and deny it tomorrow, or have someone on his team do so for him. Anyway):

"There are moments in which a rose is more important than a piece of bread".

So when you next lose your job and cannot afford to eat and you are walking past someone's garden and there are dozens of roses blooming there, you could sneak off with one or two of them and eat them down the road .....

And to my critics who keep asking why I am always so cynical, may I quote the words of the 2nd significant girlfriend of my life, a wonderful lady called Margaret (who wisely hated the British PM who shared her name) I knew in Lancashire back in the 1980s:

"You know behind that cynical facade is a really nice person".

I shall remember her for many things, but for that piece of insight most of all.