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“It is you; you are the light around these familiar intimate things.”
― The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
― The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
“If you hold to Nature, to the simplicity that is in her, to the small detail that scarcely one man sees, which can so unexpectedly grow into something great and boundless; if you have this love for insignificant things and seek, simply as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems to be poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory, not perhaps in the understanding, which lags wondering behind, but in your innermost consciousness, wakefulness and knowing.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“Tolerating is the gift from God to women!”
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“And the heart has become so tired, and the longing so vast.”
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“Whether you are surrounded by the singing of a lamp or the sounds of a storm, by the breathing of the evening or the sighing of the sea, there is a vast melody woven of a thousand voices that never leaves you and only occasionally leaves room for your solo. (Letters on Life)”
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“Have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“Ponekad prolazim pored malih radnji, recimo u rue de Seine. Trgovci starim stvarima ili mali knjižarski antikvari i prodavci bakroreza, prepunjenih izloga. Niko nikad ne ulazi kod njih, oni očigledno ne prave poslove. Ali kad čovek pogleda unutra, vidi ih kako sede, sede i čitaju, bezbrižni; ne brinu se za sutra, ne strahuju za uspeh, imaju psa koji sedi pred njima, dobro raspoložen, ili mačku, koja tišinu čini još većom idući duž nizova knjiga i prevlačeći dlakom preko njih, kao da briše imena sa hrptova.
Ah, kad bi to bilo dovoljno : želeo bih ponekad da kupim takav prepun izlog i da sa psom sednem iza njega na dvadeset godina.”
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Ah, kad bi to bilo dovoljno : želeo bih ponekad da kupim takav prepun izlog i da sa psom sednem iza njega na dvadeset godina.”
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“What an unilateral life, when from the material of a renunciation, we must fashion something we love.”
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“Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of a body as it turns away.”
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where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of a body as it turns away.”
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“Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII
Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.
Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.
Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?
Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.”
― Sonnets to Orpheus
Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.
Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.
Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?
Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.”
― Sonnets to Orpheus
“Poetry is the past that breaks out in our hearts.”
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“The natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights... Everything is a gestation and then bringing forth.”
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“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”
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“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love. Death stands before eternity and says YES.”
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“Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power / formless as the straining energy that it wrests from the earth.”
― The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
― The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
“I believe that almost all our sorrows are moments of tension which we experience as a paralysis, because we no longer hear our estranged feelings living. Because we are alone with the strange thing that has entered into us; because for a moment everything familiar and customary has been taken from us; because we stand in the middle of a crossing where we cannot remain standing.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, we
breathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,
yielding us fainter fragrance.”
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breathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,
yielding us fainter fragrance.”
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“Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore/Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time/will stay up, read, write long letters/and wander the avenues, up and down/restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.”
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“Da dürfen Sie ... nicht erschrecken, wenn eine Traurigkeit vor Ihnen sich aufhebt, so groß, wie Sie noch keine gesehen haben; wenn eine Unruhe, wie Licht und Wolkenschatten, über Ihre Hände geht und über all Ihr Tun. Sie müssen denken, daß etwas an Ihnen geschieht, daß das Leben Sie nicht vergessen hat, daß es Sie in der Hand hält; es wird Sie nicht fallen lassen.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“Be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything else...What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.”
― Letters To A Young Poet
― Letters To A Young Poet
“Think, dear Sir, of the world that you carry inside 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 on your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“Nowhere, beloved, can world be but within us. Our life passes in transformation. And the external dwindles away.”
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“that is where young people so often and so grievously go wrong: that they (whose nature it is to have no patience) throw themselves at each other when love comes over them, scatter themselves abroad, just as they are in all their untidiness, disorder and confusion . . .: But what is to be done then? How is life to act upon this heap of half crushed matter which they call their communion and which they would dearly like to style their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? So each one loses himself for the other’s sake, and”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year—, not only a season
in time—, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil and home.”
― Duino Elegies
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year—, not only a season
in time—, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil and home.”
― Duino Elegies
“What we all need most urgently now: to realize that transience is not separation—for we, transient as we are, have it in common with those who have passed from us, and they and we exist together in one being where separation is just as unthinkable. Could we otherwise understand such poems if they had been nothing but the utterance of someone who was going to be dead in the future? Don’t such poems continually address inside of us, in addition to what is found there now, also something unlimited and unrecognizable? I do not think that the spirit can make itself anywhere so small that it would concern only our temporal existence and our here and now: where it surges toward us there we are the dead and the living all at once.”
― The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke
― The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke
“His gaze, blunted
by the unnumbered procession
of iron bars, uncounted
as his softly padded steps.
Smooth motion of blood and sinew
turning in its own, small circle
prescribed by bars and walls
...and skin, confined.
Suddenly, without warning,
a flash of light and image
pierces the caged brain,
and passing through its beating heart
to stillness finds its way. ”
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by the unnumbered procession
of iron bars, uncounted
as his softly padded steps.
Smooth motion of blood and sinew
turning in its own, small circle
prescribed by bars and walls
...and skin, confined.
Suddenly, without warning,
a flash of light and image
pierces the caged brain,
and passing through its beating heart
to stillness finds its way. ”
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“What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (1993-09-17). Letters to a Young Poet (p. 22). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.”
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Rilke, Rainer Maria (1993-09-17). Letters to a Young Poet (p. 22). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.”
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“But nature, exhausted, takes lovers back into herself
as if she couldn't accomplish that kind of vitality twice.”
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as if she couldn't accomplish that kind of vitality twice.”
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“Have patience with everything unresolved in you heart and try to love the questions themselves. It is possible to live and not know.”
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“We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate. From images that are full, the spirit plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled; there are no lakes till eternity. Here, falling is best. To fall from the mastered emotion into the guessed-at, and onward.”
― The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
― The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
