Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Ist dir Trinken bitter, werde Wein.

turn towards nature, and try, like a First Man, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

Does the ore feel trapped in coins and gears? does it feel homesick for earth?

Just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Who says that all must vanish? Who knows, perhaps the flight of the bird you wound remains, and perhaps flowers survive caresses in us, in their ground. It isn't the gesture that lasts, but it dresses you again in gold armor--from breast to knees-- and the battle was so pure an Angel wears it after you.

that young man, like the son of a neck and a nun

Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not lose too much time and too much courage in explaining

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it." ? Rainer Maria Rilke, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

It is quite rare to encounter a truly creative and productive person who resides in his own stillness or simply in the midst of his melody, close to the honest beating of his heart!

Czemu mieliby?my chcie? zamieni? m?dre nierozumienie dziecka na niech?? i pogard?. Wszak nierozumienie oznacza bycie samemu, natomiast niech?? i pogarda - udzia? w tym, od czego cz?owiek chce si? za ich pomoc? odseparowa?.

De meeste gebeurtenissen zijn niet te verwoorden, ze voltrekken zich in een ruimte die nog nooit door een woord is betreden.

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.

You have to live within yourself and think of all of life, all of its millions of possibilities, openings, and futures in relation to which there exists nothing that is past or has been lost. (Letters on Life)

Here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable.

Ich glaube, dass fast alle unsere Traurigkeiten Momente der Spannung sind, die wir als Lähmung empfinden, weil wir unsere befremdeten Gefühle nicht mehr leben hören. Weil wir mit dem Fremden, das bei uns eingetreten ist, allein sind; weil uns alles Vertraute und Gewohnte für einen Augenblick fortgenommen ist; weil wir mitten in einem Übergang stehen, wo wir nicht stehen bleiben können.

Through loss, through great, immoderate loss, we are actually quite introduced into the Whole. Death is only an unsparing way of placing us on intimate and trusting terms with that side of our existence that is turned away from us.

Seek out some simple and true community with them, of the kind that need not change, even when you yourself become more and more different; love life in them, in an unfamiliar form, and be kind to those who are aging, who fear the very solitude in which you trust.

Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn, wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören, und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehn, und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören. Brich mir die Arme ab, ich fasse dich mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand, halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen, und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand, so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen.

Wir haben keinen Grund, gegen unsere Welt Misstrauen zu haben, denn sie ist nicht gegen uns. Hat sie Schrecken, so sind es unsere Schrecken, hat sie Abgründe, so gehören diese Abgründe uns, sind Gefahren da, so müssen wir versuchen, sie zu lieben.

Eskiden insan biliyordu (ya da belki de seziyordu) ki, meyvenin çekirdeÄŸini ta??mas? gibi, ölümü kendi içinde ta??maktad?r.

love your solitude, accept the pain it causes you, and make a melody with it.

Suchen Sie die Tiefe der Dinge: dort steigt Ironie nie hinab.

The demands that the hard work of love make on our development are larger than life, and as beginners we are not a match for them. But if we can hold out and take this love upon us as a burden and an apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the trivial and frivolous games behind which people have hidden from the utter seriousness of their existence, then perhaps a small advance and some relief will be sensible to those who come long after us. That would mean a great deal.

Because he loves only as a male, and not as a human being