Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Love at first is nothing like merging, surrendering, and uniting with a second person (for what would a union be with something undefined and unfinished, still disordered—?); it is a high incentive for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world for himself for the sake of another, it is a large, demanding claim on him, something that elects him and calls him into the distance.

Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; just let it happen.

but how can people who have already flung together and no longer set themselves any limits or tell one another apart, and who therefore possess nothing of their own any more, how on earth can they find a way out of themselves, out of the depths of a solitude that has already been spilt and squandered?

Ultimately nobody can help anyone else in life; one has this recurring experience in every conflict and confusion: that one is alone. (Letters on Life)

Alone he climbs on, up the mountains of primal grief. And not once do his footsteps echo from the soundless path.

Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde. Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag. Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde? mit meiner Nacht? mit meinem Tag? Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus, keine Stelle auf der ich lebe. Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe, werden reich und geben mich aus. [Der Dichter]

I only wanted to advise you also, to grow quietly and seriously throughout your development too; you cannot disturb it more violently than if you look to the outside and from the outside expect a response to questions that only your innermost feeling at your quietest hour can possibly answer.

A year doesn't matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless.

And we, who have always thought of happiness as rising , would feel the emotion that almost overwhelms us whenever a happy thing falls .

We let go of one or the other always yet again: this joyfulness and that sadness. We still do not own either of them.

if there is nothing in common between you and other people, try being close to things, they will not desert you; there are the nights still and the winds that go through the trees and across many lands; among things and with the animals everything is still full of happening, in which you may participate;

take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind-hearted towards those you leave behind

because letter-writing requires more of me than just the basic wherewithal:

She has something of her very own, something suffered, accomplished, perfected

Things are not all so easy to grasp and to express as most people would have us believe; most events are inexpressible, and take place in a sphere that no word has ever entered. Most inexpressible of all are works of art, existences full of secrets whose life continues alongside ours, whilst ours is transitory.

if there is nothing in common between you and other people, try being close to things, they will not desert you; there are the nights still and the winds that go through the trees and across many lands; among things and with the animals everything is still full of happening;

love your solitude and bear the pain it causes you with melody wrought with lament.

I have my dead, and I have let them go, and was amazed to see them so contented, so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful, so unlike their reputation. Only you return, brush past me, loiter, try to knock against something, so that the sound reveals your presence. Oh don't take from me what I am slowly learning. I am sure you have gone astray if you are moved to homesickness for anything in this dimension.

And you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground.

To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, do not yet know how to love:

Es giebt ein Wesen, das vollkommen unschädlich ist, wenn es dir in die Augen kommt, du merkst es kaum und hast es gleich wieder vergessen. Sobald es dir aber unsichtbar auf irgendeine Weise ins Gehör gerät, so entwickelt es sich dort, es kriecht gleichsam aus, und man hat Fälle gesehen, wo es bis ins Gehirn vordrang und in diesem Organ verheerend gedieh, ähnlich den Pneumokokken des Hundes, die durch die Nase eindringen. Dieses Wesen ist der Nachbar.

And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.

love then is what my hands attempt to grasp because I want to say a prayer whose sounds my burning mouth, my lips, cannot bring forth … (Franz Kappus)

You have had many great sadnesses which have now passed by. And you say that their passing was also hard and upsetting for you. But I ask you to consider whether these great unhappinesses did not rather pass through you.