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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes (displaying: 1 - 30 of 361 quotes)

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes
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Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
...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
Theme:
...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
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
Theme:
Beauty is only the start of bearable terror.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
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
Theme:
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor futurelessens . . . . Superabundant existencewells in my heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
You darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
It is also good to love: because love is difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
Theme:
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
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
Theme:
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
For there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
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
Theme:
... a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude ...
Rainer Maria Rilke
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety - like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in the palm of its hand and will not let you fall.
Rainer Maria Rilke
World was in the face of the beloved--, but suddenly it poured out and was gone: world is outside, world can not be grasped. Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink world, so near that I couldn't almost taste it? Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank. But I was filled up also, with too much world, and, drinking, I myself ran over.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Perhaps creating something is nothing but an act of profound remembrance.
Rainer Maria Rilke
What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Theme:
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!
Rainer Maria Rilke