Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

The leaves fall, fall as from far, Like distant gardens withered in the heavens; They fall with slow and lingering descent. And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls From out the stars into the Solitude. Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall And lo! the other one:—it is the law. But there is One who holds this falling Infinitely softly in His hands. - Autumn

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.

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

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.

Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power / formless as the straining energy that it wrests from the earth.

For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it becomes clear that most people get to know only one corner of their room, a window seat, a strip of floor which they pace up and down.

Kendi içine yürümek ve saatler boyu kimselere rastlamamak. Ä°ÅŸte eriÅŸilmesi gereken ÅŸey bizler için

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

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.

Wie hab ich das gefühlt was Abschied heißt. Wie weiß ichs noch: ein dunkles unverwundnes grausames etwas, das ein Schönverbundnes noch einmal zeigt und hinhält und zerreißt.

It is all about praising. Created to praise, his heart is a winepress destined to break, that makes for us an eternal wine. His voice never chokes with dust when words for the sacred come through. All becomes vineyard. All becomes grape, ripening in the southland of his being. Nothing, not even the rot in royal tombs, or the shadow cast by a god, gives the lie to his praising. He is ever the messenger, venturing far through the doors of the dead, bearing a bowl of fresh-picked fruit.

Among people, particularly those I love, I so easily get talking and give out everything possible in conversation, so that it is not available for my work. It is a stupid piece of clumsiness that I am so wanting in the gift of sociability, the talent for easy but at the same time recreative conversations, in which one does not exert and expend onesel

But nature, exhausted, takes lovers back into herself as if she couldn't accomplish that kind of vitality twice.

To Lou: I want to see the world through you; for then I shall not be seeing the world but only you, you you! I have never seen you without thinking that I should like to pray to you. I have never heard you without thinking that I should like to believe in you. I have never longed for you without thinking that I should like to suffer for you. I have never desired you without thinking that I should be allowed to kneel before you.

What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it, but longing to degrade not even death; we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends, to feel its hands about us like a friend's.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?

Yes — the springtime needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. (Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl. Es muteten manche Stirme dir zu, dass du sie spürtest.)

Num casal há sempre um que que é o guardião da solidão do outro.

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.

Forest! They seek your trees to sleep among, With their long sentences hung. Forest!

Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being . . . . It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, invisibly, inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

MUSIC: Take me by the hand; it's so easy for you, Angel, for you are the road even while being immobile. You see, I'm scared no one here will look for me again; I couldn't make use of whatever was given, so they abandoned me. At first the solitude charmed me like a prelude, but so much music wounded me.