Rainer Maria Rilke > Quotes

“Freilich ist es seltsam, die Erde nicht mehr zu bewohnen, kaum erlernte Gebräuche nicht mehr zu üben, Rosen, und andern eigens versprechenden Dingen nicht die Bedeutung menschlicher Zukunft zu geben; das, was man war in unendlich ängstlichen Händen, nicht mehr zu sein, und selbst den eigenen Namen wegzulassen wie ein zerbrochenes Spielzeug. Seltsam, die Wünsche nicht weiterzuwünschen. Seltsam, alles, was sich bezog, so lose im Raume flattern zu sehen. Und das Totsein ist mühsam und voller Nachholn, daß man allmählich ein wenig Ewigkeit spürt.—Aber Lebendige machen alle den Fehler, daß sie zu stark unterscheiden. Engel (sagt man) wüßten oft nicht, ob sie unter Lebenden gehn oder Toten. Die ewige Strömung.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“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. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is—; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent—?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“But there young people so often and so badly go wrong: in that they (who by nature have no patience) fling themselves at one another when love comes over them, scatter themselves just as they are in all their troubledness, disorder, confusion … But what can come of that? What is life supposed to do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their togetherness and would like to call their happiness, were it possible, their future? Each person loses himself then for the other’s sake and loses the other and many more who were yet to come.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And so, dear sir, love your solitude, accept the pain it causes you, and make a melody with it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation

“I don’t like to
write letters while I am traveling, because for letter writing I need more than the
most necessary tools: some silence and solitude and a not too familiar hour.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“For it is not only lethargy alone which causes human relationships to repeat themselves in the same old way with such unspeakable monotony in instance after instance; it is the fearful shying away from any kind of new, unforseeable experience which we think we may not be equal to. But only someone who is ready for anything and rules nothing out, not even the most enigmatic things, will experience the relationship with another person as a living thing and will himself live his own existence to the full. For imagining an individual's existence as a larger or smaller room reveals to us that most people are only acquainted with one corner of their particular room, a place by the window, a little area to pace up and down. That way, they have a certain security.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“For example, it never occurred to me before how many faces there are. There are multitudes of people, but there are many more faces, because each person has several of them. There are people who wear the same faces for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, splits at the seams, stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. There are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change it, never have it cleaned. It's good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in storage. Their children will wear them. And why not? A face is a face.
Other people change faces incredibly fast, put on one after another, and wear them out. At first, they think they have an unlimited supply, but when they are barely forty years old they come to their last one. There is, to be sure, something tragic about this. They are not accustomed to taking care of faces; their last one is worn through in a week, has holes in it, is in many places as thin as paper, and then, little by little, the lining shows through, the non-face, and they walk around with that on.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“People have tended to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Rilke points out that we can be shaken by losses and by gains, that we may be unsettled as much by negative encounters, adversity, difficulty, illness, loss, and death as by the peculiar intensification of our being in the experience of joy, friendship, creation, and, especially, love. He also stresses that during those experiences, even when they bring us closer to others, we are fundamentally alone. During such moments, when our life is suddenly open to questioning, we are cast back on ourselves without support from any outside agency. Every rite of passage—birth, adolescence, love, commitment, illness, loss, death—marks such an experience where we are faced with our solitude. But this is not a melancholic thought for Rilke. He revalorizes solitude as the occasion to reconsider our decisions and experiences, and to understand ourselves more accurately—and his words can serve as uncannily apt guides for such reflection.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke

“We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, "Quella Segreta Lentezza"Lettere A André Gide

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Solitude is not merely a matter of being alone: it is a territory to be entered and occupied.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Rast. Gast sein einmal. Nicht immer selbst seine Wünsche bewirten mit kärglicher Kost. Nicht immer feindlich nach allem fassen, einmal sich alles geschehen lassen und wissen: was geschieht, ist gut.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Uneori, firește, se trăda printr-o nemulțumire naivă, socotind că nu i se dă suficientă atenție; pe vremea când eram acolo se putea întâmpla să se înece brusc la masă, într-un fel ostentativ și complicat, care îi asigura compătimirea tuturor și o făcea, cel puțin pentru moment, să apară senzațională și captivantă, cum ar fi dorit să fie în viața mondenă. Presupun că tata era singurul care îi lua în serios crizele astea mult prea numeroase. El o privea înclinat politicos peste masă și se putea observa cum îi oferă în gând și îi pune la dispoziție propria-i trahee sănătoasă. Șambelanul, firește, nu mai mânca nici el; sorbea o înghițitură de vin și se abținea să-și declare opinia proprie. El și-o susținuse o singură dată, în fața soției sale, la masă. E mult de atunci, însă povestea a fost totuși colportată cu răutate și pe ascuns; se ivea aproape oriunde mai era cineva care încă n-a auzit-o. Se povestea că, într-o vreme, șambelana se putea supăra foarte rău din cauze petelor de vin care, din neîndemânare, apăreau pe fața de masă. Observa imediat o astfel de pată și, indiferent de împrejurarea în care s-ar fi produs, o expunea, ca să zic așa, batjocurii cu cea mai mare violență. Așa s-a întamplat tocmai când avea mai mulți oaspeți de vază. Câteva pete nevinovate, pe care le exagera, au devenit obiectul acuzațiilor ei batjocoritoare și, oricât s-a străduit bunicul să o calmeze prin semne discrete și exclamații glumețe, ea a rămas totuși la reproșurile încăpățânate pe care apoi, de altfel a trebuit să le întrerupă în mijlocul frazei. Pentru că s-a întâmplat ceva nemaipomenit și de neînțeles. Șambelanul ceruse vinul roșu care tocmai se servea și își umplea foarte atent paharul. Numai că, într-un fel uimitor, n-a încetat să toarne și după ce paharul era de mult plin, ci, tot mai calm, a turnat încet și atent până când maman, care niciodată nu se putea abține, a pufnit în râs și astfel toată situația penibilă s-a rezolvat râzând, pentru că toți s-au luat după ea ușurați, iar șambelanul a ridicat privirea și i-a întins sticla servitorului. [...] A murit spre primăvară, într-o noapte, în oraș. Sophia Oxe, care dormea alături, cu ușa deschisă, nu a auzit nimic. Când a fost găsită, dimineața, era rece ca gheața. Imediat după aceea a început boala grea și îngrozitoare a șambelanului. Parcă așteptase sfârșitul ei ca să poată muri fără să țină seama de nimic, așa cum îi convenea lui.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“Not wooing, no longer shall wooing, voice that has outgrown
it
be the nature of your cry; but instead, you would cry out as
purely as a bird
when the quickly ascending season lifts him up, nearly
forgetting
that he is a suffering creature and not just a single heart
being flung into brightness, into the intimate skies.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing then you are a writer”

"Se alla mattina quando ti alzi non pensi altro che allo scrivere allora sei uno scrittore”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Je mehr Liebe man gibt, desto mehr besitzt man davon.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights. Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Accetta dunque [...] un bacio con tutto il cuore nella solenne ora di Natale, la più pacata dell'anno, la più misteriosa, in cui i desideri ancora ignari si tendono fino all'estremo e vengono per prodigio esauditi: [...] abbandona ogni dubbio e incomprensione: in quest'ora abbiamo un posticino dentro di noi dove siamo semplicemente bambini, che attende e sta là, fiducioso e mai confuso, nel suo diritto a una grande gioia: questo è il Natale.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Songs of longing!

And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometimes loudly and sometimes secretly so that you alone can hear them… But they will also be different — different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand.”

―from a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Ist es möglich, dass es Leute giebt, welche ‚Gott’ sagen und meinen, das wäre etwas Gemeinsames? - Und sieh nur zwei Schulkinder: es kauft sich der eine ein Messer, und sein Nachbar kauft sich ein ganz gleiches am selben Tag. Und sie zeigen einander nach einer Woche die beiden Messer, und es ergiebt sich, dass sie sich nur noch ganz entfernt ähnlich sehen, - so verschieden haben sie sich in verschiedenen Händen entwickelt. (Ja, sagt des einen Mutter dazu: wenn ihr auch gleich immer alles abnutzen müsst. -) Ach so: Ist es möglich, zu glauben, man könnte einen Gott haben, ohne ihn zu gebrauchen?
Ja, es ist möglich.”
― Rainer Maris Rilke

“Here, where an immense country lies about me, over which the winds pass coming from the seas, here I feel that no human being anywhere can answer for you those questions and feelings that deep within them have a life of their own; for even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things. But I believe nevertheless that you will not have to remain without a solution if you will hold to objects that are similar to those from which my eyes now draw refreshment. If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it—but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

“I want to encourage you in your pain so that you will completely experience it in all its fullness, because as the experience of a new intensity it is a great life experience and leads everything back again to life, like everything that reaches a certain degree of greatest strength.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation

“He can remind himself that all beauty in plants and animals is a quiet and durable form of love and longing, and he can see the animal, as also the plant, patiently and willingly joining and multiplying and growing, not from physical pleasure, not from physical suffering, but bowing to necessities which are greater than pleasure and pain and more powerful than desire and resistance. Oh if only mankind could embrace this mystery, which penetrates the earth right into its smallest elements, with more humility, and bear and sustain it with more gravity and know how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Est-ce en exemple que tu te proposes?
Peut-on se remplir comme les roses,
en multipliant sa subtile matière
qu'on avait faite pour ne rien faire?

Car ce n'est pas travailler que d'être
une rose, dirait-on.
Dieu, en regardant par la fenêtre,
fait la maison.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

“أترى وهي تُقبل على الدرب، المتنزهة،
هذه التي نحسدها، الهانئة، المتريثة؟
في منعطف الدرب ينبغي ان يحييها
سادة من الأمس، بهيون.

تحت مظلتها، بلطافة خاملة،
تستثمر الخيار العذب:
تمحي برهة أمام النور المفرط المباغتة،
ثم تسترجع الظل الذي به تستضيء.

مع تنهيدة الصديقة
يرتفع الليل كله،
السماء المنبهرة تعبرها
مداعبة وجيزة.

كما لو كانت قوة عناصرية
في الكون تصبح
ثانيةً أم
كل حب يضيع”
― Rainer Maria Rilke