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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each shall stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.”

PeopleIfsTwoLyingPurposeOpportunityPeriodsSolitudeHighestTasksCrowdsIndifferenceIsolationProvidingLove And Friendship
Book:Selected Letters
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“It almost seems as if autumn were the true creator, more creative than the spring, which is too even-toned, more creative when it comes with its will-to-change and shatters the much too ready-made, self-satisfied and really almost bourgeois-complacent image of summer.”

IfsMadeSelfSeemsCreativeReadySummerSpringCreatorSatisfiedAutumnBourgeoisComplacent
Book:Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1902-1926
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“All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.”

IfsThinkingFeelingsFacesJoySidesHoursClearBloodChildhoodPureBottomLiftsYour ChildrenJust OneIntoxicationLift You Up
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition.”

PeopleWayHelpingGrowsEasyDifficultSidesClearAliveCostSolutionsOppositionConventions
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.... Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

WorldWantTryingReasonHelpingHandsBeautifulWaitingOur LivesDangerTerribleBraveTerrorNo ReasonDragonsOur WorldPrincessHelplessAbyssMistrust
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“My loving friend, you see, my life was never given a foundation, no one was able to imagine what it would want to become. In Venice there stands the so-called Ca del Duca, a princely foundation, on which later the most wretched tenement came to be built. With me it's the opposite: the beautiful arched elevations of my spirit rest on the most tentative beginning; a wooden scaffolding, a few boards....Is that why I feel inhibited in raising the nave, the tower to which the weight of the great bells is to be hoisted (by angels, who else could do it)?”

WantFeelsAbleBeautifulSpiritGivenImagineAngelBuiltOppositesWeightFoundationBoardsBellsTowersWretchedVeniceElevationScaffoldingTenementsLoving Friends
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“And one of the things I find most moving is the way people with infirmities manage to embrace Life, and from the cool flowers by the wayside reach conclusions about the vast splendour of its great gardens. They can, if their souls' strings are finely tuned, arrive with much less effort at the feeling of eternity; for everything we do, they may dream. And precisely where our deeds end, theirs begin to bear fruit.”

PeopleIfsWayMaySoulEndsFeelingsDreamMovingEffortFlowerBearsGardenEternityEmbraceFruitDeedsConclusionManageStringsInfirmitySplendourEmbrace LifeGreat Garden
Book:Diaries of a Young Poet
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“The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,as if orchards were dying high in space.Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."And tonight the heavy earth is fallingaway from all other stars in the loneliness.We're all falling. This hand here is falling.And look at the other one. It's in them all.And yet there is Someone, whose handsinfinitely calm, holding up all this falling.”

IfsLooksHandsEarthFallStarsSpaceDyingLonelinessCalmHeavyTonightLeafsOrchard
Book:Selected poems
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