Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsSolitudeLoveLifeWorldPoetryKnowsWayPeopleHeart

Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.”

IfsWorldFeelsEarthPainMovingNightTurnsSpeakWaterSpaceDarknessMysteryDrinkQuietFlowWineSilentRingsSensesBitterBreathingIntensityBellsTowersBack And ForthRushingCrossroadsRushing Water
Book:In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
Create image

“I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]”

KnowsWorldGivingYearsMayHas BeensStillsLastsSongStormCirclesReach OutTowersLiving My LifeI Live My LifeFalcon
Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Create image

“All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.”

PeopleGivingPersonsTwoTogetherOrderFallDifficultSolitudeOneselfAbandonI Have LearnedCompanionshipLove One AnotherStrengtheningBeing Together
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.”

KnowsGivingI CanCountryFeelingsHandsBigsHappensMovingNightSpeakLosesWalksLimitsShadowGive MeLongingFinalsTerrorFlamesKeep GoingRecallsSeriousnessFlareFlare Up
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“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!”

IfsYearsMayMeanDoeMatterPainArtistForceTreeTenSummerSpringEternityGratefulLaysSilentPatientStormNot AfraidCountingBeing An ArtistMeasuringSapI Am GratefulRipening
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. You love most of all those who need you as they need a crowbar or a hoe. You have not grown old, and it is not too late To dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.”

WantNeedsGivingFeelsLightFacesFallSecretStepsDarknessJudgmentLateInfiniteRaisedDepthEaseToo LateThirstNeed YouWhat You LoveEvery StepStep UpSlipperyHoe
Book:Selected poems
Create image

“I would like to sing someone to sleep, to sit beside someone and be there. I would like to rock you and sing softly and go with you to and from sleep. I would like to be the one in the house who knew: The night was cold. And I would like to listen in and listen out into you, into the world, into the woods. The clocks shout to one another striking, and one sees to the bottom of time. And down below one last, strange man walks by and rouses a strange dog. And after that comes silence. I have laid my eyes upon you wide; and they hold you gently and let you go when something stirs in the dark.”

MenWorldEyeLastsNightHouseDarkSleepWalksSilenceRocksDogStrangeColdBottomWoodsWideClockLetting You GoStrange Man
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable it is alternately stone in you and star.”

StillsHomeNightFallPassionHouseHeavenStarsGrowsDarkWatchesDarknessTreeSkyLandCallingStonesEternitySightBlueAncientSunsetCoatsImmensityDarkeningAncient Trees
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

PeopleWorldDifferentMomentsGivenPleasureKnowingSeeingAcceptanceFinePureGloryTiredFruitTongueSpotsSensualBad ThingsSensationsDistractionFullnessExaltedMisuseUnendingStimulantsRallyingSensual Pleasure
Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Create image

“When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everthing in me that is bewildered and confused.”

SoundSeaOceanWideNoiseRhythmBeachConfusedShoreAnxiousUneasyBewilderedOcean SeaOceans And SeasSeashoreSailors And The SeaBeach And OceanBeach OceanBad ThoughtsSea And SkySea And BeachCool BeachGoing To The Beach
Book:Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Create image