Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.

si disponemos nuestra vida según el principio que nos aconseja mantenernos siempre en lo difícil, lo que nos parecía extraño, se nos transformará en algo infinitamente fiel y digno de toda confianza. [...] Quizá todos los dragones de nuestra vida sean princesas que sólo esperan vernos una vez hermosos y valientes. Quizá todo lo horrible, en el fondo, sea sólo una forma de desamparo que solicita nuestra ayuda.

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly, and over and over again you said be.

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and static moment when our future comes upon us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and accidental point when it happens to us as if from the outside.

Tous mes adieux sont faits. Tant de départs m'ont lentement formé dès mon enfance. Mais je reviens encor, je recommence, ce franc retour libère mon regard. Ce qui me reste, c'est de le remplir, et ma joie toujours impénitente d'avoir aimé des choses ressemblantes à ces absences qui nous font agir.

We have already had to adjust our understanding of so many theories of planetary motion, and so too we shall gradually learn to recognize that what we call fate

N'est-il pas temps que ceux qui aiment se libèrent de l'objet aimé et le surmontent, frémissants ? Ainsi le trait vainc la corde pour être, rassemblé dans le bond, plus que lui-même. Car nulle part il n'est d'arrêt.

We are the bees of the invisible. We gather the honey of the visible, and store it in the great golden honeycomb of the invisible.

Ah, only plunged toward you does my face cease being on display, grows into you and twines on darkly, endlessly, into your sheltered heart…

The myths about the dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, only waiting for the day when they will see us handsome and brave?

Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime is filled with you...

You must be patient as an invalid and trusting as a convalescent

Do not watch yourself too closely. Do not draw over-rapid conclusions from what is happening to you. Simply let it happen.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

ad?na kader dediÄŸimiz ÅŸeyin d??ar?dan insanlar?n içine girmediÄŸi, insanlar?n içinden d??ar? ç?kt??? da yavaÅŸ yavaÅŸ farkedilecektir.

And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did. Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke

Es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Wenn man die Fragen lebt, lebt man vielleicht allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fremden Tages in die Antworten hinein.

Come when you should. All this will have been/ passing through me for you to breathe.

Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for - that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers? But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.

The weight of this unexplained and perhaps greatest event, which only due to a misunder- standing has gained the reputation of being arbitrary and cruel, presses us (I think increasingly) more evenly and more deeply into life and places the utmost obligations on our slowly growing strengths

depict your sadnesses and desires, passing thoughts and faith in some kind of beauty - depict all this with intense, quiet, humble sincerity and make use of whatever you find about you to express yourself, the images from your dreams and the things in your memory.

We have to be committed not to miss or neglect any opportunity to suffer, to have an experience, or to be happy; our soul arises refreshed from all of that. It has a resting place at those heights that are difficult to reach, and it is at home where one can advance no further: up there we have to carry it. But as soon as we put it down for dead at those extreme spots it awakens and takes flight into skies and celestial depths that from now on belong to us.

Do not suppose that I am smarting under disappointments. Quite the contrary. At times I am bemused to find how readily I relinquish all my expectations for the sake of reality, even when it is harsh. My God, if only some of this could be shared. But would it then be, would it be? No, it is only at the price of solitude.

All strength we give away comes over us again, experienced and altered. Thus it is in prayer. And what is there, truly done, that is not prayer?