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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.”

WayWantDoeArtRealThreeLiteratureExistenceHalfPracticeKnowingExampleCriticismDenyProfessionNeighborJournalismArtisticQuartersUnrealReal Ones
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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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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“So it's back once more, back up the slope. Why do they always ruin my rope with their cuts? I felt so ready the other day, Had a real foretaste of eternity In my guts. Spoonfeeding me yet another sip from life's cup. I don't want it, won't take any more of it. Let me throw up. Life is medium rare and good, I see, And the world full of soup and bread, But it won't pass into the blood for me, Just goes to my head. It makes me ill, though others it feeds; Do see that I must deny it! For a thousand years from now at least I'm keeping a diet.”

WorldWantYearsRealLife IsFeltCuttingBloodReadyThousandLet MeEternityIllDenyBreadMediumsRuinsCupsDietsGutsThousand YearsSoupRopeSlopes
Book:The best of Rilke: 72 form-true verse translations with facing originals, commentary, and compact biography ; translated by Walter Arndt ; foreword by Cyrus Hamlin
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“We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.”

KnowsWantLooksStillsRealActorsWalksHalfRolesPiecesMouthsMirrorsRemainsSticksMereCornersRemoveDisguiseBentEyebrowsExaggerationMockery
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, 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 unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.”

KnowsWantSometimesActionMovingLyingMy OwnSecretSilentSecretive
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.”

PeopleKnowsWantStillsEndsHouseEnjoySoundWorryDogObjectsListeningMountainYardsMiraculousMockeryHush
Book:Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry Including
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“What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.”

WantWholeFeelingsSeemsBitsWaitingHoursAnswersGrowingAdviceDevelopmentAddJust OneEmphasis
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“My life is not this steeply sloping hour, in which you see me hurrying. Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree; I am only one of my many mouths, and at that, the one that will be still the soonest. I am the rest between two notes, which are somehow always in discord because Death’s note wants to climb over— but in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling. And the song goes on, beautiful.”

WantStillsTwoBeautifulLife IsSongHoursDarkBehindsTreeGoes OnMouthsNotesClimbsTremblingIntervalsDiscordHurrying
Book:Selected poems
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“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
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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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“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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“Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.”

ThinkingWorldWayWantSelfRememberHealingChildhoodHappeningsWorthyPerceiveYearningTeensWithin You
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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