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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“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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“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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“Whoever you are: in the evening step out of your room, where you know everything; yours is the last house before the far-off: whoever you are. With your eyes, which in their weariness barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, you lift very slowly one black tree and place it against the sky: slender, alone. And you have made the world. And it is huge and like a word which grows ripe in silence. And as your will seizes on its meaning, tenderly your eyes let it go.”

KnowsWorldMadeEyeLastsHouseGrowsBlackRoomsSilenceStepsTreeSkyHugeEveningLiftsWornLet It GoRipeThresholdWearinessWorn OutSlenderYour Room
Book:The Book of Images
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“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

WorldHumansPhilosophyLastsIndividualDifficultHuman BeingsLove IsTasksTestsUltimateClaimsSakeProofPreparation
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.”

WorldHeartSeemsPowerfulBehindsVisionGoneMovementThousandCirclesBarsPassingPassingsLiftsMusclesRitualPaceWearyCurtainsTenseArrestedPupilsPlungeStrideParalyzed
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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“You darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world, for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone, and then no one outside learns of you. But the darkness pulls in everything: shapes and fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them! - powers and people - and it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights.”

PeopleWorldLightMovingNightEnergyAnimalDarknessFireLove YouShapesCirclesHave FaithFenceLove You MoreI Love You More
Book:Selected poems
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“And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.”

WorldLifeMadeWholeHandsWould BeEarthUsedTurnsFeltMorningFireSawsEqualHarmonyWhole WorldEvery MorningAgain And AgainReplacedAnother WorldNew EarthShabby
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.”

IfsMenWorldChildrenSometimesHouseChurchWalksWalkingBlessingRemainsGlassesEastDishesAnother ManSupper
Book:Selected poems
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“Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them.”

MenWorldHumansHas BeensFeelingsDesireOrderHuman BeingsResponsibilityBearsMembersMen And WomenOppositesHeavySexualityNeighborConfusedRenewal
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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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.”

IfsWorldFeelsEarthPainMovingNightTurnsSpeakWaterSpaceDarknessMysteryDrinkQuietFlowWineSilentRingsSensesBitterBreathingIntensityBellsTowersBack And ForthRushingCrossroadsRushing Water
Book:In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
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“I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]”

KnowsWorldGivingYearsMayHas BeensStillsLastsSongStormCirclesReach OutTowersLiving My LifeI Live My LifeFalcon
Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
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“I would like to sing someone to sleep, to sit beside someone and be there. I would like to rock you and sing softly and go with you to and from sleep. I would like to be the one in the house who knew: The night was cold. And I would like to listen in and listen out into you, into the world, into the woods. The clocks shout to one another striking, and one sees to the bottom of time. And down below one last, strange man walks by and rouses a strange dog. And after that comes silence. I have laid my eyes upon you wide; and they hold you gently and let you go when something stirs in the dark.”

MenWorldEyeLastsNightHouseDarkSleepWalksSilenceRocksDogStrangeColdBottomWoodsWideClockLetting You GoStrange Man
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

PeopleWorldDifferentMomentsGivenPleasureKnowingSeeingAcceptanceFinePureGloryTiredFruitTongueSpotsSensualBad ThingsSensationsDistractionFullnessExaltedMisuseUnendingStimulantsRallyingSensual Pleasure
Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
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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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“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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