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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.”

WayHumansMatterWholePainColorPaintingActivityIntellectualWitSettlingDisturbingIntercourseAdvocacyDeliberationAgility
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers-perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”

IfsWayWantLifeGivingActionTimeAsksQualityKnowledgeKnowingDoubtBuildingInspirational LifeLife PhilosophyBecomingDemandGiving UpFindingsSelf ImprovementTrainingArgumentCriticismTestsIntelligentTrainWorkersUglyProofPersistenceNovelistsProtestSelf ControlEmbarrassedSelf DisciplineImprovingDayNot Giving UpPersistentSpoilDestroyersGood QualityInsistingBewilderedGiving Up Is Not An OptionAttentiveness
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“There would have to be bread, some rich, whole-grain bread and zwieback, and perhaps on a long, narrow dish some pale Westphalian ham laced with strips of white fat like an evening sky with bands of clouds. There would be some tea ready to be drunk, yellowish golden tea in glasses with silver saucers, giving off a faint fragrance.”

GivingLongWholeWould BeWhiteRichSkyReadyBandCloudsGlassesBreadFatsGoldenDrunkEveningTeaSilverGrainPaleDishesFragranceHamWhole GrainsEvening Sky
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.”

WorldLifeShouldFirstsMayWholeHelpingFateConflictShould HaveBottomBest ThingsThings In LifeSelf RelianceRelianceExpansePerplexityBest Things In Life
Book:Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
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“Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetiness into the heavenly wine.”

GivingTwoBigsLastsLordWindSummerShadowWinePressesLaysFruitCommandFulfillmentHeavenlyOctoberMeadowsSundials
Book:Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
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“If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. 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.”

IfsMomentsLastsWaitingDifficultForgetRacePrinciplesCourageOur LivesAncientMythAliensIntimateDragonsPrincessTransformedTrusted
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you.”

LoveYearsChildrenWholeLyingMotherGirlFatherDestinyClearSkyFlowerArmsMountainFlowDepthDearAncientAccomplishLandscapeFallenSomedayMultitudesOur LoveSapCloudedSeethingClear SkiesSingle Child
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Sex is difficult, yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged...If you only recognize this and manage out of yourself, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom) then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your best possession.”

IfsWayNeedsHas BeensSexDifficultChildhoodAchieveBecomingLosingRelationPossessionManageCustomsConventionsDifficult ThingsUnworthyLosing YourselfSwagger
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”

YearsBelieveLongDoneFallGivenToo MuchSeriousDemandTasksClaimsGreat Things
Book:Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
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“I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie, and I want my grasp of things to be true. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that carried me through the wildest storm of all.”

WantLongUseFacesLyingMotherPaintingLong TimeUnderstoodStormShipsBeing TruePitcherDescribe Myself
Book:Selected poems
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