Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.

but there is a great deal of beauty here, because there is beauty everywhere.

The sleeping and the waking, the bright and the dark, the voice and the silence... la présence et l'absence. All the presumed opposites which converge somewhere in one point where they sing the hymn of their union--and this place is, for the time being, our heart.

The main thing was to be living. That was the main thing.

Somehow I had a premonition of what I so often felt at later times: that you did not have the right to open a single book unless you engaged to read them all. With every line you read, you were breaking off a portion of the world. Before books, the world was intact, and afterwards it might be restored to wholeness once again. But how was I, who could not read, to take up the challenge laid down by all of them?

I come home from the soaring In which I lost myself. I was song, and the refrain which is God Is still roaring in my ears.

All we can offer where we love is this: to loose each other; for to hold each other comes easy to us and requires no learning.

You know that I am not one of those individuals who neglect their body in order to turn it into an offering for their soul; my soul would not at all have appreciated such a sacrifice.

Only those are in the right who keep an open door for both good and ill, so that each may come but also leave according to its needs. (Letters on Life)

Confessez-vous à vous-même: mourriez-vous s'il vous était défendu d'écrire ?

If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches, for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.

Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.

Out of infinite desires rise finite deeds like weak fountains that fall back in early trembling arcs. But those, which otherwise in us keep hidden, our happy strengths — they come forth in these dancing tears. (Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen, die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen. Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen, unsere fröhlichen kräfte — zeigen sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.)

Verweilung, auch am Verstrautesten nicht, ist uns gegeben

There is nothing less apt to touch a work of art than critical words: all we end up with there is more or less felicitous misunderstandings. Things are not all as graspable and sayable as on the whole we are led to believe; most events are unsayable of all are works of art, mysterious existences whose life endures alongside ours, which passes away.

Art means to be oblivious to the fact that the world already exists and to create one.

These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who

Is it possible that despite our inventions and progress, despite our culture, religion and knowledge of the world, we have remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that even that surface, which might still have been something, has been covered with unbelievably boring material, leaving it looking like drawing-room furniture in the summer holidays.

Above all marriage is a new task and a new seriousness—a new challenge and a question regarding the strength and kindness of each participant and a new great danger for both.

Perform no miracles for me, But justify Thy laws to me Which, as the years pass by me. All soundlessly unfold.

Allen diesen Meinungen von Kunst, derjenigen Tolstojs mit eingeschlossen, ist aber Eines gemeinsam: es wird nicht so sehr das Wesen der Kunst betrachtet, vielmehr sind alle bemüht, sie aus ihren Wirkungen zu erklären.

To be an artist means: not to reckon and count; to ripen like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without fear lest no Summer might come after.

Das Kunstwerk möchte man also erklären: als ein tiefinneres Geständnis, das unter dem Vorwand einer Erinnerung, einer Erfahrung oder eines Ereignisses sich ausgiebt und, losgelöst von seinem Urheber, allein bestehen kann. Diese Selbständigkeit des Kunstwerkes ist die Schönheit. Mit jedem Kunstwerke kommt ein Neues, ein Ding mehr in die Welt.