Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us.

BUt then that is one of the severest tests of an artist: he must always remain innocent and unconscious of his greatest virtues if he is to avoid depriving them of their uninhibitedness and purity.

Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all other green, with tiny waves on the edges of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)—: why then have to be human—and, escaping from fate, keep longing for fate? . . .

Does the cosmic space, we dissolve into, taste of us then?

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.

Perhaps everything terrifying is at bottom the helplessness that seeks our help.

because I consider this to be the highest task of a connection between two people: that both guard the others loneliness. – Rainer Maria Rilke

If the heart longs for nothing but to be new and unlimited, the world is instantly the same as on the day of its creation and infinite.

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

A ella sólo nosotros la vemos; el animal libre tiene siempre su ocaso detrás de si y ante sí tiene a Dios, y cuando anda, anda en la eternidad, como andan las fuentes. Nosotros nunca tenemos, ni siquiera un solo día, el espacio puro ante nosotros, al que las flores se abren infinitamente.

To be an artist means: not to reckon and count; to ripen like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without fear lest no Summer might come after. It does come. But it comes only to the patient ones, who are there as if eternity lay in front of them, so unconcernedly still and far. I am learning it daily, learning it through pains to which I am grateful: patience is all!

Gehen Sie in sich. Erforschen Sie den Grund, der Sie schreiben heißt; prüfen Sie, ob er in der tiefsten Stelle Ihres Herzens seine Wurzeln ausstreckt, gestehen Sie sich ein, ob Sie sterben müssten, wenn es Ihnen versagt würde zu schreiben.

But difficult things are what we were set to do, almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.

Erforschen Sie den Grund, der Sie schreiben heißt; prüfen Sie, ob er in der tiefsten Stelle Ihres Herzens seine Wurzeln ausstreckt.

A work of art is good if it is arisen out of necessity

Oh if only mankind could embrace this mystery, which penetrates the earth right into its smallest elements, with more humility, and bear and sustain it with more gravity and know how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. If only mankind could hold its own fertility in awe, which is one and the same whether it manifests itself in the spirit or in the flesh.

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive and lend it grandeur and height. And those who come together in the nighttime and are entwined in a cradle of desire are carrying out a serious work in collecting sweetness, profundity, and strength for the song of some poet yet to come, who will rise up to speak unutterable pleasures.

O futuro é fixo, meu caro senhor Kappus, nós é que estamos sempre em movimento no espaço infinito.

The wish to improve another person's situation presupposes a level of insight into his conditions that even a poet does not possess with regard to a character he himself invented.

Si ahora se acercara el arcángel, el peligroso, detrás de las estrellas, si bajara dando un paso sólo y viniendo de allí: hacia arriba latiendo, nuestro propio corazón nos mataría. ¿Quién sois?

And about feelings: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.

And if what is close is far, then the space around you is wide indeed and already among the stars; take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind-hearted towards those you leave behind, and be assured and gentle with them and do not plague them with your doubts or frighten them with your confidence or your joyfulness, which they cannot understand.

Von deinen Sinnen hinausgesandt, geh bis an deiner Sehnsucht Rand; gieb mir Gewand. Hinter den Dingen wachse als Brand, dass ihre Schatten, ausgespannt, immer mich ganz bedecken. Lass dir Alles geschehn: Schönheit und Schrecken. Man muss nur gehn: Kein Gefühl ist das fernste.