a page torn from an old commonplace book

... a man may feel as if he had come to pieces, and at the same time is standing in the road inspecting the parts, and wondering what sort of machine it will make if he can put it together again. — T. S. Eliot

(I don't know German, but I know great translation of poems when I see it. This, of Rilke's last poem, is from Wolfgang Lippmann's "Rilke: A Life"):

Now come, ultimate essence I avow,
desperate pain that tears my body's flesh...
In your ferocity my earthly gentleness will
turn to hellish fury. Pure and entire,
I mounted suffering's chaotic pyre
free of all future and sure that for this heart,
with all its treasures muted, future cannot be bought.
Is it still I who burns unrecognized and caught?
I can no longer reach for memories.
Oh life, oh life: to be without such blaze.
But I am burning. No one knows my face.

To must of us the movements of the soul are so mysterious that we seize upon events to make them explicable.— Scenes from Provincial Life

Carelessly disposed along the tops of the low bookcases was a mass of ancient pottery—shapes subtle, free, and flowing; shapes angular, abstract, and austere; brilliant glazes, delicate crackles; textures that flattered the sense of touch through the sense of sight. — Michael Innes

(And another tidbit from Innes, who knew how to pack a punchline:)

Without direct word spoken, it had to come to the audience that Hamlet recognized of a sudden that Ophelia's presence was part of a plot. From that moment he would be speaking to her—savagely—with the skin of his mind.