Quotes from Rilke, Rainer Maria

To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.

There is no task as urgent for us as to learn daily how to die, but our knowledge of death is not increased by the renunciation of life; only the ripe fruit of the here and now that has been seized and bitten will spread its indescribable taste in us.

the future stands still dear Mr Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, we breathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember, yielding us fainter fragrance.

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.

Praise, my dear one. Let us disappear into praising. Nothing belongs to us.

Angels often do now know whether they walk among the dead or living.

The ultimate intuitions and insights will only approach one who lives in his work and remains there, and whoever considers them from afar gains no power over them.

Dieses ist das erste Vorgefühl des Ewigen: Zeit haben zur Liebe.

Then draw near to nature. Pretend you are the very first man and then write what you see and experience, what you love and lose.

I don't want to talk to anyone, lest I squander your words' echo, which ripples like a shine over mine and lends their sound a richness.

Lauschende Wolke über dem Wald. Wie wir sie lieben lernten, seit wir wissen, wie wunderbald sie als weckender Regen prallt an die träumenden Ernten.

Eines ist, die Geliebte zu singen. Ein anderes, wehe, jenen verborgenen schuldigen Fluß-Gott des Bluts.

If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place.

You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue.

Da schlug er jäh die Hände vors Gesicht, wie er so kniete, um nichts zu sehen mehr nach diesem Lächeln.