Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Du, dem ich's nicht sage, daß ich bei Nacht weinend liege, dessen Wesen mich müde macht wie eine Wiege. Du, der mir nicht sagt, wenn er wacht meinetwillen: wie, wenn wir diese Pracht ohne zu stillen in uns ertrügen? Sieh Dir die Liebenden an, wenn erst das Bekennen begann, wie bald sie lügen.

But if the endlessly dead awakened a symbol in us, perhaps they would point to the catkins hanging from the bare branches of the hazel-trees, or would evoke the raindrops that fall onto the dark earth in springtime.-- And we, who have always thought of happiness as rising , would feel the emotion that almost overwhelms us whenever a happy thing falls .

I learn it daily, learn it with painto which I am grateful: patience is everything! (Letter Three).

At last, after weeks of daily fending off, you get your bearings back, and somewhat dazed you tell yourself: No, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects which generation after generation have continued to admire, which inexpert hands have mended and restored, they mean nothing, and are nothing and have no heart and no value; but there is a great deal of beauty here, because there is beauty everywhere.

For somewhere reigns an old hostility / between living one's Life and doing one's Work.

And you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.

What would you do, God, if I died?

For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

In the depths everything becomes law.

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. (Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht. Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter, daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.)

You are the partner of her loneliness, the unspeaking center of her monologues. With each disclosure you encompass more and she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you.

For the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indiferent place.

Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely, your path struggles on through incomprehensible mankind. All the more futile perhaps for keeping to its direction, keeping on toward the future, toward what has been lost.

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. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Das ist die Sehnsucht: wohnen im Gewoge und keine Heimat haben in der Zeit. Und das sind Wünsche: leise Dialoge täglicher Stunden mit der Ewigkeit.

IMPERMANENCE Driftsand of the hours. Quietly disappearing, continuously, even the happily consecrated design. Life blows away, always: pillars already rise without connection, carrying nothing but empty air.

It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

Whether you are surrounded by the singing of a lamp or the sounds of a storm, by the breathing of the evening or the sighing of the sea, there is a vast melody woven of a thousand voices that never leaves you and only occasionally leaves room for your solo. (Letters on Life)

We, hurt by ourselves, keen to be hurters and keen to be hurt back deep inside. We, like weapons laid beside anger asleep.

Isn't it time that, in love, we freed ourselves from the loved one and, trembling, endured: as the arrow endures the string, collecting itself to be more than itself as it shoots?

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.

Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation. You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold, comes at long last over everyone. (Gieb deine Schönheit immer hin ohne Rechnen und Reden. Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin. Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn, kommt endlich über jeden.)

Why must a man be always taking on Things not his own, as if he were a servant whose marketing-bag grows heavier and heavier from stall to stall and, loaded down, he follows and doesn't dare ask: Master, why this banquet?