Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes - Page 14

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• Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Heart, Angel, Would Be

  Duino Elegies no. 1 (written 1912) (translation by Stephen Mitchell)

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• You must change your life.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Changing Your Life

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1940). “Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems”, p.140, Univ of California Press

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• If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Everyday, Matter, Complaining

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.12, New World Library

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• More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Marriage, Legs, Four

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• Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Change, Giving, Entering

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1945). “Letters”

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• Go into yourself. Dig into yourself for a deep answer

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Answers

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• I have patience for centuries in me and will live as though my time were very big.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Century, Bigs, Having Patience

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.121, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is possible I am pushing through solid rock, like the vein of ore encased, alone. I am such a long way in I can see no way through and no space. Everything is close to my face and everything close to my face is stone. I don't have much knowledge yet in grief, so this darkness makes me feel small. You, be the Master; Make yourself fierce; break in. And then your great transforming will happen to me And my great grief cry will happen to you.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Grief, Struggle, Rocks

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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.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Eye, Sky, Silence

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

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• I implore those who love me to love my solitude.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Solitude

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• I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  World, Enough, This World

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Annemarie S. Kidder (2001). “The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God”, p.39, Northwestern University Press

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• The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Hero, Young, Die Young

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1975). “University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures”

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• It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Thinking, Doe, Alive

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Fear Of The Inexplicable”

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• most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  People, Rooms, Window

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• What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fighting, Winning, Want

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• Look, lovers: almost separately they come towards us through the flowery grass and slowly; parting's so far from thought of, they indulge the extravagance of walking unembraced.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Looks, Extravagance, Lovers

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1976). “Poems, 1906 to 1926”

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• Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk only on feelings. That faces upward and in its mirror receives heavenly roads, which travel along themselves. That has learned to walk upon water when it scoops, that walks upon wells, transfiguring every path. That steps into other hands, changes those that are like it into a landscape: wanders and arrives within them, fills them with arrival.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Hands, Mirrors, Water

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Palm”

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• We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Intimate

  "The Selected Poetry of 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.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Tired, Acceptance, Knowing

  Rainer Maria Rilke, John J. L. Mood (1994). “Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations”, p.41, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is good to say it aloud: 'Nothing has happened.' Once again: 'Nothing has happened.' Does that help?"

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Doe, Helping, Happened

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1930). “The Journal of My Other Self”

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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.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dog, People, Worry

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2005). “Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry Including "The Life of the Virgin Mary"”, Annmarie s Kidder

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• To work is to live without dying.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Work, Dying

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.88, W. W. Norton & Company

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• And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. Who's turned us round like this, so that we always, do what we may, retain the attitude of someone who's departing? Just as he, on the last hill, that shows him all his valley for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, we live our lives, for ever taking leave.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Attitude, Valleys, May

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1977). “Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

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• Painting is something that takes place among the colors.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Color, Agility, Painting

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2002). “Letters on Cézanne”, p.66, Macmillan

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• But you, divine poet, you sang on till the end as the swarm of rejected maenads attacked you, shrieking, you overpowered their noise with harmony, and from pure destruction arose your transfigured song.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Song, Maenads, Noise

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus: A Dual Language Edition”, p.133, Vintage

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