Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Eating, too, has been turned away from its true nature: want on the one hand and superfluity on the other have troubled the clarity of this need, and all the profound, simple necessities in which life renews itself have similarly been obscured.

Don't be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law. And those who live the mystery falsely and badly (and they are very many) lose it only for themselves and nevertheless pass it on like a sealed letter, without knowing it.

If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing… then you are a writer.

Rast. Gast sein einmal. Nicht immer selbst seine Wünsche bewirten mit kärglicher Kost. Nicht immer feindlich nach allem fassen, einmal sich alles geschehen lassen und wissen: was geschieht, ist gut.

perhaps the sexes are more akin than people think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in one phenomenon: that man and woman, freed from all mistaken feelings and aversions, will seek each other not as opposites but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to bear in common, simply, earnestly, and patiently, the heavy sex that has been laid upon them.

Ich glaube, daß fast alle unsere Traurigkeiten Momente der Spannung sind, die wir als Lähmung empfinden, weil wir unsere befremdeten Gefühle nicht mehr leben hören. Weil wir mit dem Fremden, das bei uns eingetreten ist, allein sind, weil uns alles Vertraute und Gewohnte für einen Augenblick fortgenommen ist; weil wir mitten in einem Übergang stehen, wo wir nicht stehen bleiben können.

Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein, hebst du ganz langsam einen schwarzen Baum und stellst ihn vor den Himmel: schlank, allein. Und hast die Welt gemacht. Und sie ist groß und wie ein Wort, das noch im Schweigen reift. Und wie dein Wille ihren Sinn begreift, lassen sie deine Augen zärtlich los ...

Think, dear sir, of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking what you will; {...} only be attentive to that which rises up in you and set it above everything that you observe about you. What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.

Suffering is not discerned, neither has love been learned, and what removes us in death, nothing unveils. Only the song's high breath hallows and hails.

Bugün bunu beklememiÅŸtim; çok tabii, çok basit bir iÅŸmiÅŸ gibi cesaretle sokaÄŸa ç?km??t?m. Ama yine de bir ÅŸey vard? iÅŸte, beni bir ka??t gibi al?p buruÅŸturan ve atan, müthiÅŸ bir ÅŸey vard? iÅŸte

I don't like to write letters while I am traveling, because for letter writing I need more than the most necessary tools: some silence and solitude and a not too familiar hour.

Rufe mich zu jener deiner Stunden, die dir unaufhörlich widersteht.

Oh trees of life, when will your winter come? We're not in tune. Not like migratory birds. Outmoded, late, in haste, we force ourselves on winds which let us down upon indifferent ponds. Though we've had to learn how flowering is fading, somewhere lions still roam, unaware, in their majesty, of any weakness. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from the "Fourth Elegy," Duino Elegies . Trans. by David Young. (W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition, June 17, 2006) Originally published 1923.

Maybe we're here only to say: house, bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window — at most, pillar, tower … but to say them, remember, oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves never dreamed of existing so intensely.

C'est toi qui prépares en toi plus que toi, ton ultime essence. Ce qui sort de toi, ton ultime essence. Ce qui sort de toi, ce troublant émoi, c'est ta danse. Chaque pétale consent et fait dans le vent quelques pas odorants invisibles. Ô musiques des yeux, toute entourée d'eux, tu deviens au milieu intangible.

You become more protective and more capable of granting protection exactly to the extent that you have lost and now lack protection. The solitude into which you were cast so violently makes you capable of balancing out the loneliness of others to exactly the same degree.

Est-ce en exemple que tu te proposes? Peut-on se remplir comme les roses, en multipliant sa subtile matière qu'on avait faite pour ne rien faire? Car ce n'est pas travailler que d'être une rose, dirait-on. Dieu, en regardant par la fenêtre, fait la maison.

Dis-moi, rose, d'où vient qu'en toi-même enclose, ta lente essence impose à cet espace en prose tous ces transports aérien? Combien de fois cet air prétend que les choses le trouent, ou, avec une moue, il se montre amer. Tandis qu'autour de ta chair, rose, il fait la roue.

Maledizione antica dei poeti che invece di parlare si lamentano, che sempre giudicano il loro sentimento invece di formarlo; e si ostinano a pensare che quanto in loro è lieto o triste, spetti a loro deplorare o celebrare nella poesia.

We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence.

I don't have much knowledge yet in grief - so this massive darkness makes me small. You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in: then your great transforming will happen to me, and my great grief cry will happen to you.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Der Tod ist groß. Wir sind die Seinen lachenden Munds. Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen, wagt er zu weinen mitten in uns.