Rainer Maria Rilke > Quotes

“There is only one solitude, and it is vast and not easy to bear and almost everyone has moments when they would happily exchange it for some form of company, be it ever so banal or trivial, for the illusion of some slight correspondence with whoever one happens to come across, however unworthy...But perhaps those are precisely the hours when solitude grows, for its growth is painful like the growth of boys and sad like the beginning of spring. But that must not put you off. What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours - that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Only those are in the right who keep an open door for both good and ill, so that each may come but also leave according to its needs. (Letters on Life)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Im Schwierigen liegen die freundlichen Kräfte, die Hände, die an uns arbeiten.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“My looking ripens things
and they come towards me, to meet and be met.”
― Rilke

“Schließlich wollte ich Ihnen ja auch nur raten, still und ernst durch Ihre Entwicklung durchzuwachsen; Sie können sie gar nicht heftiger stören, als wenn Sie nach außen sehen und von außen Antwort erwarten auf Fragen, die nur Ihr innerstes Gefühl in Ihrer leisteten Stunde vielleicht beantworten kann.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Tudo quanto é velocidade não será mais do que passado, porque só aquilo que demora nos inicia.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. The verdict on it lies in this nature of its origin: there is no other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty — describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Weißt du, ich will mich schleichen
leise aus lautem Kreis,
wenn ich erst die bleichen
Sterne über den Eichen
blühen weiß.

Wege will ich erkiesen,
die selten wer betritt
in blassen Abendwiesen?
und keinen Traum, als diesen:
Du gehst mit.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Deep, calm, siren-like, and magical.


-Two Poems to Hans Thomas on his Sixtieth Birthday,”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“If your love for […] wants to do something now, then its work and task is this: to catch up with what it has missed. For it has failed to see whither this person has gone, it has failed to accompany her in her broadest development, it has failed to spread itself out over the new distances this person embraces, and it hasn’t ceased looking for her at a certain point in her growth, it wants obstinately to hold fast to a definite beauty beyond which she has passed, instead of persevering, confident of new shared beauties to come.”

—from letter to Paula Modersohn-Becker Bremen (February 12, 1902)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Eating, too, has been turned away from its true nature: want on the one hand and superfluity on the other have troubled the clarity of this need, and all the profound, simple necessities in which life renews itself have similarly been obscured.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside.

And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there’s a church.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive and lend it grandeur and height.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And if we only organize our life according to the principle which teaches us always to hold to what is difficult, then what now still appears most foreign will become our most intimate and most reliable experience. How can we forget those ancient myths found at the beginnings of all peoples? The myths about the dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“You longed to be yourself.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“ghost of a distant author, with the disturbing presence of the foreign text, and with the phantom of the reader.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Stories of God: Geschichten vom lieben Gott

“Basically, if it is good, one can't live to see it recognized: otherwise it's just half good and not reckless enough...”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne

“Ninguém o pode aconselhar ou ajudar, — ninguém.
Não há senão um caminho. Procure entrar em si mesmo. Investigue o motivo que o manda escrever; examine se estende suas raízes pelos recantos mais profundos de sua alma; confesse a si mesmo: morreria, se lhe fosse vedado escrever? Isto acima de tudo: pergunte a si mesmo na hora mais tranqüila de sua noite: "Sou mesmo forçado a escrever?” Escave dentro de si uma resposta profunda. Se for afirmativa, se puder contestar àquela pergunta severa por um forte e simples "sou", então construa a sua vida de acordo com esta necessidade. Sua vida, até em sua hora mais indiferente e anódina, deverá tornar-se o sinal e o testemunho de tal pressão”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a Um Jovem Poeta

“We are the driven ones.
But the march of time
Is but a trifle
In our perpetual enduring.

All this hastening
Will soon be done;
For only lingering
Can consecrate our being.

Young men, don’t throw
Your energies into tests of
Speed or aerial flight.

Know that all is in repose:
The darkness, the brilliantly luminous,
The flower, the book”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“De meeste gebeurtenissen zijn niet te verwoorden, ze voltrekken zich in een ruimte die nog nooit door een woord is betreden.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Brieven aan een jonge dichter

“Bir mısra için insanın birçok şehir görmesi, insanlar, şeyler, hayvanlar tanıması gerekir, kuşların nasıl uçtuğunu hissetmeli ve küçük çiçeklerin sabah hangi kıpırdanışla açtığını. İnsanın geçmişi düşünebilmesi gerekir, bilinmeyen bölgelerdeki yolları, umulmadık karşılaşmaları ve çoktandır yaklaştığını hissettiği vedalaşmaları; henüz aydınlanmamış çocukluk günlerini, sevindirici bir şey dediklerinde (bu bir başkası için sevinçti) anlamayıp üzdüğümüz anne babayı; öyle tuhaf, öyle çeşitli ve derin değişimlerle başlayan çocukluk hastalıklarını. Ölmüşlerin yanında oturmuş olmalı, açık pencereli ve kesik kesik görüntülerin olduğu odalarda. Hatıraları olmak da yetmez. Onları eğer çoksa unutabilmek de gerekir, ayrıca tekrar gelmelerini beklemek için büyük sabır ister. Çünkü henüz tam hatıra olmamışlardır. Bunlar ancak içimizdeki kana, bakışımıza ve hareketlerimize dönüşünce ve adsızlaşıp kendimizden ayırt edilmez olunca, ancak o zaman çok ender bir saatte bir dizenin ilk kelimesi onun ortasında ve onların içinden ortaya çıkar.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“How oddly akin is the hero to the early dead. Duration
doesn't interest him. For him, only ascent matters, steadfastly
he drives on and enters the altered constellation
of his constant danger. There few would find him. But
fate, which grimly shuts us in silence, suddenly inspired
sings him into the storm of his uproaring world.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“In the room...they are inside the books. They move sometimes within the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Already the ripening barberries are red
And the old asters hardly breathe in their beds.
The man who is not rich now as summer goes
Will wait and wait and never be himself.

The man who cannot quietly close his eyes
certain that there is vision after vision inside,
simply waiting for nighttime
to rise all around him in darkness-
it's all over for him, he's like an old man.

Nothing else will come; no more days will open
and everything that does happen will cheat him.
Even you, my God. And you are like a stone
that draws him daily deeper into the depths.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Through love and through death, our innate ability to transform the loss of control is activated to bring forth a deeper awareness of life.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters for the Grieving Heart