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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes (displaying: 1 - 30 of 367 quotes)

Rainer Maria Rilke
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If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Whoever you are, go out into the evening, leaving your room, of which you know every bit; your house is the last before the infinite, whoever you are.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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So many are alive who do?t seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched. But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival. You are not dead yet, i?s not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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...always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enoughto make every moment holy.I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enoughjust to lie before you like a thing,shrewd and secretive.I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,as it goes toward action;and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who know secret thingsor else alone.I want to be a mirror for your whole body,and I never want to be blind, or to be too oldto hold up your heavy and swaying picture.I want to unfold.I do?t want to stay folded anywhere,because where I am folded, there I am a lie.and I want my grasp of things to betrue before you. I want to describe myselflike a painting that I looked atclosely for a long time,like a saying that I finally understood,like the pitcher I use every day,like the face of my mother,like a shipthat carried methrough the wildest storm of all.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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...which so incorruptibly reduced a reality to its color content that it resumed a new existence in a beyond of color, without any previous memories.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering high above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Beauty is only the start of bearable terror.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot holdanything else. It seems to him there area thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like a ritual dance around a centerin which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupilslifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor futurelessens . . . . Superabundant existencewells in my heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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You darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Let your beauty manifest itselfwithout talking and calculation.You are silent. It says for you: I am.And comes in meaning thousandfold,comes at long last over everyone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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It is also good to love: because love is difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayersstopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witnessthe unbelievable: for there before him stoodthe legendary creature, startling white, thathad approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes. The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced abody wrought of finest ivory. And ashe moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight. High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the signof his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait. The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, whenopened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth, whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly: he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose. His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure, reflecting vistas and events long vanished, and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Tha?s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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You, you only, exist.We pass away, till at last,our passing is so immensethat you arise: beautiful moment,in all your suddenness,arising in love, or enchantedin the contraction of work.To you I belong, however time maywear me away. From you to youI go commanded. In betweenthe garland is hanging in chance; but if youtake it up and up and up: look:all becomes festival!
Rainer Maria Rilke
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The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise...
Rainer Maria Rilke
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That's my window. This minuteSo gently did I alightFrom sleep--was still floating in it.Where has my life its limitAnd where begins the night?I could fancy all things around meWere nothing but I as yet;Like a crystal's depth, profoundlyMute, translucent, unlit.I have space to spare inside meFor the stars, too: so full of roomFeels my heart; so lightlyWould it let go of him, whomFor all I know I have startedTo love, it may be to hold.Strange, as if never charted,Stares my fortune untold.Why is it I am beddedBeneath this infinitude,Fragrant like a meadow,Hither and thither moved,Calling out, yet fearingSomeone might hear the cry,Destined to disappearingWithin another I.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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They grope before them like blind people and find each the other as they would a door. Almost like children that dread the night, they press close into each other. And yet they are not afraid. There is nothing that might be against them: no yesterday, no morrow; for time is shattered. And they flower from its ruins. He does not ask: 'Your husband?' She does not ask: 'Your name?' For indeed they have found each other, to be unto themselves a new generation. They will give each other a hundred new names and take them all off again, gently, as one takes an earring off.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way--and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again?invisibly? inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights!Had I only received you, inconsolable sisters,on more abject knees, only buried myself with more abandon in your loosened hair. How we waste our afflictions!We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance, hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're reallyour wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, oneof the seasons of the clandestine year -- ; not onlya season --: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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For there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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... a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude ...
Rainer Maria Rilke
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