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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Progress And again my inmost life rushes louder, as if it moved now between steeper banks. Objects become ever more related to me, and all pictures ever more perused. I feel myself more trusting in the nameless: with my senses, as with birds, I reach into the windy heavens from the oak, and into the small ponds' broken-off day my feeling sinks, as if it stood on fishes. (Fortschritt Und wieder rauscht mein tiefes Leben lauter, als ob es jetzt in breitern Ufern ginge. Immer verwandter werden mir die Dinge und alle Bilder immer angeschauter. Dem Namenlosen fühl ich mich vertrauter: Mit meinen Sinnen, wie mit Vögeln, reiche ich in die windigen Himmel aus der Eiche, und in den abgebrochnen Tag der Teiche sinkt, wie auf Fischen stehend, mein Gefühl.)”

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Book:The Book of Images
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“Out of infinite desires rise finite deeds like weak fountains that fall back in early trembling arcs. But those, which otherwise in us keep hidden, our happy strengths — they come forth in these dancing tears. (Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen, die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen. Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen, unsere fröhlichen kräfte — zeigen sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.)”

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Book:The Book of Images
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“But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us: “Yes, you’ve entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime is filled with you . . . " — what does it matter? they can’t contain us, we vanish inside them and around them. (Denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen; ach wir atmen uns aus und dahin; von Holzglut zu Holzglut geben wir schwachern Geruch. Da sagt uns wohl einer: ja, du gehst mir ins Blut, dieses Zimmer, der Frühling füllt sich mit dir . . . Was hilfts, er kann uns nicht halten, wir schwinden inihm und um ihn.)”

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Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“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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Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
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“How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. - Love Song”

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Book:Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose
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“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. - Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower”

Poetry
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
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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.”

Poetry
Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
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“Bisognerebbe saper attendere, raccogliere, per una vita intera e possibilmente lunga, senso e dolcezza, e poi, proprio alla fine, si potrebbero forse scrivere dieci righe valide. Perché i versi non sono, come crede la gente, sentimenti (che si acquistano precocemente), sono esperienze. Per scrivere un verso bisogna vedere molte città, uomini e cose, bisogna conoscere gli animali, bisogna capire il volo degli uccelli e comprendere il gesto con cui i piccoli fiori si aprono al mattino. Bisogna saper ripensare a itinerari in regioni sconosciute, a incontri inaspettati e congedi previsti da tempo, a giorni dell'infanzia ancora indecifrati, ai genitori che eravamo costretti a ferire quando portavano una gioia e non la comprendevamo (era una gioia per qualcun altro), a malattie infantili che cominciavano in modo così strano con tante profonde e grevi trasformazioni, a giorni in stanze silenziose e raccolte e a mattine sul mare, al mare sopratutto, a mari, a notti di viaggio che passavano con un alto fruscio e volavano assieme alle stelle - e ancora non è sufficiente poter pensare a tutto questo. Bisogna avere ricordi di molte notti d'amore, nessuna uguale all'altra, di grida di partorienti e di lievi, bianche puerpere addormentate che si rimarginano. Ma bisogna anche essere stati accanto ad agonizzanti, bisogna essere rimasti vicino ai morti nella stanza con la finestra aperta e i rumori intermittenti. E non basta ancora avere ricordi. Bisogna saperli dimenticare, quando sono troppi, e avere la grande pazienza di attendere che ritornino. Perché i ricordi in sé ancora non sono. Solo quando diventano sangue in noi, sguardo e gesto, anonimi e non più distinguibili da noi stessi, soltanto allora può accadere che in un momento eccezionale si levi dal loro centro e sgorghi la prima parola di un verso.”

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Book:The notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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“This is the creature there has never been. They never knew it, and yet, none the less, they loved the way it moved, its suppleness, its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene. Not there, because they loved it, it behaved as though it were. They always left some space. And in that clear unpeopled space they saved it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace of not being there. They fed it, not with corn, but only with the possibility of being. And that was able to confer such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn. Whitely it stole up to a maid - to be within the silver mirror and in her.”

Poetry
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“The art of creating is nothing without the vast ongoing participation and collaboration of the real world, nothing without the thousandfold harmonizing of things and beings; and the creator’s pleasure is thereby inexpressibly rich because it contains memories of the begetting and bearing of millions. In a single creative thought dwell a thousand forgotten nights of love, which infuse it with immensity. And those who come together in the night, locked in thrusting desire, are gathering nectar, generating power and sweetness for some future poetic utterance that will sing the rapture.”

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Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“And to think that I might have become a poet like that if I had been allowed to settle somewhere, anywhere in the world, in one of the many shuttered-up houses in the country that no one looks after anymore. I would only have needed one room (the light room in the gable). I would have lived inside it with my old things, my family portraits, my books. And I would have had an armchair, and flowers and dogs, and a stout stick for rocky paths. And nothing else. Only a book bound in yellowing ivory-coloured leather with a flowery pattern for its endpapers: I would have written in it. I would have written a great deal, because I would have had many thoughts and memories of many things.”

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Book:The notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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“And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? turn your attention thither.try to raise the submerged sensations of the ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away. And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses. nor will you try to interest magazines in your poems; for you will see in them your fond natural possessions, a fragment and a voice of your life.”

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Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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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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“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose... ...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”

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Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; 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. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

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Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

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Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
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