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Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Book by Rainer Maria Rilke · 6 quotes · Poetry, World, Circles

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Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God Quotes

“I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. 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 before you. 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.”

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“How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing--- each stone, blossom, child--- is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him. This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.”

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“Put out my eyes: and I shall see you, too, seal up my ears: and I shall hear you still, and without feet I yet can go to you, and with no mouth, adjure you and I will. Break off my arms, and I shall hold you fast even with my heart, as though it were a hand; arrest my heart, my brain to throb is sworn, and if into my brain you fling a brand, yet on my very blood you will be borne.”

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Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
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