Rainer Maria Rilke > Quotes

“The only saddnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; the fact that a thing is difficult must be one more reason for our doing it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Ak, ir ko gi mes čia / dar galėtume geisti? Ne angelų, ne žmonių, / ir apdairūs žvėrys jau regi, / kad ne taip jau labai įsikūrę / mes šitam gan mįslingam pasauly.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“عِش بعض الوقت في تلك الكتب، تعلَّم منها ما تراه جديرًا بالتعلم، ولكن قبل كل شيء أحبَّها. هذا الحب سيعود عليك آلاف المرات، وأيًّا ما كان المسار الذي ستسير فيه حياتك ـ فأنا متيقن من أنه سيتخلل نسيج تطورك كواحد من أهم الخيوط من بين كل خيوط خبراتك وإحباطاتك وابتهاجاتك .”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, ‫رسائل إلى شاعر شاب‬

“Grafas Brahe laikė ypatingo dėmesio ženklu kalbėtis su mano tėvu apie jo mirusią žmoną, mano motiną. Jis vadino ją grafaite Sibile, ir kiekvienas sakinys baigdavosi taip, lyg jis apie ją teirautųsi. Nė pats nežinau kodėl, bet man net atrodydavo, kad jis kalba apie visai jaunutę mergaitę balta suknele, kuri bet kada gali įeiti į salę. Tuo pačiu tonu jis kalbėdavo ir apie „mūsų mažąją Aną Sofiją“. Kai vieną dieną pasiteiravau apie tą panelę, kuri, regėjosi labai patiko seneliui, tai sužinojau, kad jis turėjo galvoje didžiojo kanclerio Konrado Reventlovo dukterį, velionio Fridricho Ketvirtojo antrąją žmoną kuri jau beveik pusantro šimto metų ilsėjosi Roskildėje. Laikų tėkmė jam nieko nereiškė, mirtis buvo tik menkas atsitikimas, kurį jis visiškai ignoravo, žmonės, kartą patekę jo atmintin, egzistavo ir toliau, ir tai, kad jie mirę, čia nieko negalėjo pakeisti. Daugeliui metų praėjus, po senojo pono mirties, buvo pasakojama, kad jis tokiu pat užsispyrimu ir ateitį priimdavęs už dabartį. Kartą jis esą kalbėjęsis su viena jauna moterim apie jos sūnus, ypač apie vieno iš jų kelione, o jaunoji dama, einanti trečiąjį savo pirmojo neštumo mėnesį, sėdėjo vos gyva iš siaubo ir baimės greta nesiliaujančio šnekėti senio.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“Pietà"

Fills now my cup, and past thought is
my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone
sets hard at its heart.
Hard that I am, I know this alone:
that thou didst grow—
— — — — — and grow,
to outgrow,
as too great pain,
my heart’s reach utterly.
Now liest thou my womb athwart,
now can I not to thee again
give birth.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nikada nismo ni spašeni ni prokleti; i umrijet ćemo “negdje u nedovršenom”.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Y cuando alguien se encamina a la mañana que está levantando, o mira hacia el atardecer, que esté lleno de acontecimientos, y cuando siente lo que allí ocurre, entonces se desprende de él todo estado social, como de un muerto, aunque se halle en medio de la vida misma.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a un joven poeta / Letters to a Young Poet (Clásicos ilustrados)

“Look, the trees are; the houses
we live in still stand. We alone
go past them like an exchange of vapors.
And things conspire to tell us nothing, half
in shame, perhaps, half in unspoken hope.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Hayatta yeni başlayanlar için sınıflar yok, insandan derhal en zor şeyi isterler daima.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“How much childhood is in that picture, and how everything is already settled there in the quiet, so indescribably lonely state of being a child, at the time when seated in an armchair one cannot touch the floor and with immense courage just keeps sitting there in that vast space which begins all around one and goes on and on.
It is a very sweet and meaningful small picture. Thank you for letting me see it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation

“From infinite longings finite deeds rise
As fountains spring toward far-off glowing skies,
But rushing swiftly upward weakly bend
And trembling from their lack of power descend-
So through the falling torrent of our fears
Our joyous force leaps like these dancing tears.
- Symbols”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“No fundo é esta a única coragem que se exige de nós: sermos corajosos diante do que é mais estranho, mais maravilhoso e mais inexplicável entre tudo com que nos deparamos.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“There is no force in the world but love, and when you carry it within you, if you simply have it, even if you remain baffled as to how to use it, it will work its radiant effects and help you out of and beyond yourself: one must never lose this belief, one must simply (and if it were nothing else) endure in it! (Letters on Life)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“There is only one way; Go within.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“wonder if he was really suited to the career for which he was preparing. His academy’s chaplain happened to see a book of Rilke’s poems in the cadet’s hands.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

“The sunken are always seeking earth again”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and longing, and he can see the animal, as he sees the plant, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not from physical pleasure, not from physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain and mightier than will and opposition. O, that man might more humbly receive this mystery, of which the earth is full, down to its smallest things, and earnestly bear it, endure it, and feel how terribly weighty it is, rather than taking it lightly.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“(...) que una cosa sigui difícil ha de ser per a nosaltres un motiu més per fer-la. estimar també és bo: perquè l'amor és difícil. Estimar de persona a persona: això és potser el més difícil que se'ns ha encomanat, el més extrem, l'última prova, el treball per al qual tot altre treball és només una preparació.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a un joven poeta

“For fame is ultimately but the summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems

“Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“From the open windows, the stale air of the night before crept out with a bad conscience.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“A jednak są oni w nas, ci dawno odeszli - jako brzemię naszego losu, w naszych skłonnościach, w szumie naszej krwi i w naszych gestach, przedzierając się do nas z głębin czasu.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

“...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked in rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it live your way to the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Si vuestra vida diaria os parece pobre, no le echéis la culpa; culpaos a vos, decíos que no sos lo suficientemente poeta como para invocar sus riquezas, ya que para el creador no existe la pobreza ni ningún lugar pobre e indiferente. Y si os encontraras en una prisión cuyas paredes no os permitieran percibir ninguno de los sonidos del mundo, ¿acaso no tendríais aún vuestra infancia, las deliciosas riquezas dignas de un rey que descansan en la cámara del tesoro de la memoria?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a un joven poeta / Elegías de Duino

“Flee general subjects and take refuge in those offered by your own day-to-day life.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The nymph who laments, guardian of our spring of tears,
Dares come only within the compass of praising, of song, -
She who watches over the settling of the precipitate,
That it be clear, on that same rock

That bears the gates and the altars. -
See, about her shoulders so tranquil there rises
The sensation that she must be the youngest
Of those sisters, to be disposed so.

Exultation knows, and fierce Desire acknowledges, -
Only Lamentation must still learn; with a maiden’s hand
She counts out the old sorrows through the night.

But suddenly, slantwise and unpractised,
She holds aloft a constellation of our voices
Against the heavens, left unobscured by her breath.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet