Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes About Eyes

Quotes about: Eyes

• The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Eye, Heart, Done

  "'Wendung' ('Turning Point')". Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1993.

• He does not always remain bent over the pages; he often leans back and closes his eyes over a line he has been reading again, and its meaning spreads through his blood.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Reading, Eye, Blood

• Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Heart, Eye, Fire

• 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.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dog, Sleep, Eye

  "The Book of Images".

• There exists a creature which is perfectly harmless; when it passes before your eyes you scarcely notice it and forget it again immediately. But as soon as it invisibly gets somehow into your ears, it develops there, it hatches, as it were, and cases have been known where it was penetrated even into the brain and has thriven devastatingly in that organ, like those pneumococci in dogs that gain entrance through the nose.This creature is one's neighbor.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dog, Eye, Brain

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1984). “Prose and poetry”, Burns & Oates

• My eyes already touch the sunny hill. Going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has inner light, even from a distance- and charges us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Distance, Eye, Light

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “A Walk”

• 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.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Eye, Sky, Silence

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.5, North Point Press

• In the night, I wish to speak with the angel to find out if she recognizes my eyes, if she will ask me: do you see Eden? And I’ll reply: Eden burns.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Eye, Angel, Night

• Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Eye, Animal, World

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