Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

What do the contours of your body mean, laid out like the lines on a hand, so that I no longer see them except as fate?

Do not, do not, do not books for ever hammer at people like perpetual bells? When, between two books, silent sky appears: be glad

That is longing: To dwell in the flux of things, To have no home in the present. And these are wishes: gentle dialogues Of the poor hours with eternity.

There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.

It is good to say it aloud: 'Nothing has happened.' Once again: 'Nothing has happened.' Does that help?"

Stand up during supper and walk outdoors, and keep on walking.

Speaking of August Rodin: He raised his world above us in an immense arc, and made it a part of nature.

Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write [create]? Dig into yourself for a deep answer.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.

Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly.

Dying is strange and hard if it is not our death, but a death that takes us by storm, when we've ripened none within us.

Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame.

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads Of her life, and weaves them gratefully Into a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall And clears it for a different celebration.

It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault, we both had nothing except patience, but Death has none. I saw him come (how meanly!) and I watched him as he took and took: none of it I could claim as mine.

Look, lovers: almost separately they come towards us through the flowery grass and slowly; parting's so far from thought of, they indulge the extravagance of walking unembraced.

True singing is a different breath, about nothing.

I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky.

To work is to live without dying.

You are nearing the land that is life; you will recognize it by its seriousness.

My art is representational by choice....if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy of being No-one's sleep under so many lids.

Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing?" I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?

A billion stars go spinning through the night, glittering above your head, But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.

Someday you will name me, then gently place those burning holy roses in my hair.[Songs of Longing]

Oh hours of childhood, when behind each shape more than the past appearedand what streamed out before us was not the f

Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.

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

If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.

I want to unfold.I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

I love the dark hours of my being.My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

Never forget that solitude is my lot ... I implore those who love me to love my soli

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough.

She who reconciles the ill-matched threadsOf her life, and weaves them gratefullyInto a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hallAnd clears it for a different celebration.

There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terrorwhich we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us.Every angel is terrible.

It was not in me It came and wentI wanted to hold it It was held by wine(I no longer know what it was)

It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault, we both had nothing except patience, but Death has none. I saw him come (how meanly!)and I watched him as he took and took:none of it I could claim as mine.

And when suddenlythe god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry, uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?

Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.

Art too is just a way of living.

O Stunden in der Kindheit, da hinter den Figuren mehr als nurVergangnes war und vor uns nicht die Zukunft.

we want it visible to showwhen even the most visible joy will reveal itselfonly when we have transformed it within.there’s nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within.

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world.

Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.

And the heart has become so tired, and the longing so vast.

Isn’t it time that, loving, we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured:as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight, something more than itself?

Isn't it time that, in love, we freed ourselves from the loved one and, trembling, endured:as the arrow endures the string, collecting itselfto be more than itself as it shoots?