Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
― Rilke Rainer Maria

“FALLING STARS: Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes -- do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“at last no one decided
And no one knocked
And no one jumped up
And no one opened
And there stood no one
And no one entered
And no one said: welcome
And no one answered: at last”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Forever

“I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.
I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.
I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Perhaps it requires of you precisely this existential anxiety in order to begin. Precisely these days of transition are perhaps the period when everything in you is working..”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“We only pass everything by
like a transposition of air.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Perhaps all the dragons of your life are princesses, who are only waiting for us to show a little beauty and courage. Perhaps at the very bottom every horror is something helpless, that wants help from us”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Rainer Maria Rilke greeted and wrestled with the angels of his Duino Elegies in the solitude of a castle surrounded by white cliffs tall trees and the sea. I greeted most of mine in the solitude of a house that still vibrated with the throbs of a singular life that had helped shape many lives and with the ache of attempts to render useful service to that life. The River of Winged Dreams was therefore constructed as a link between dimensions of past and future emotions and intellect and matter and spirit.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“And those, who come together in the night and are twined in quivering pleasure, are performing a serious work and are heaping up sweetness, depth and force for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to express inexpressible ecstasies”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like night around their order's star and gem
And growing ever darker, stony-faced,
And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped
High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,
Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:
How they surround each one of these who stopped
To read and contemplate the objects d'art,
Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.

Whit exquisite decorum they allow us
A life of whose dimensions we seem sure
And which they cannot grasp. They were alive
To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,
That is to be of darkness and to strive.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-true Verse Translations with Facing Originals, Commentary and Compact Biography

“I think of published poets that you could know of...I think [Rainer Maria Rilke] probably has the most great published poems of any poet [...] but Rilke himself was an asshole. If you look at his biography, he was probably misogynist; he was a liar, a cheat; he was a terrible father; he was selfish; he put people down; he had no consideration for anyone [...] yet, he transcends that in his greatest poems. There's that ineffable, spiritual quality - that he himself couldn't reach! But somewhere underneath that reptilian exterior, that asshole exterior of Rainer Maria Rilke, there was some good that came through – like these little sunbursts coming through clouds – that had that moment. And he'd write the Duino Elegies, he'd write the New Poems, and somewhere, that came through.
And that's an amazing thing: you can have a lot of great people who are great individuals, who are loving and caring – and they can't do that. And that's not to say that their lives are meaningless, but they will never be able to affect anyone past the propinquity of their existence. They are never going to be able to affect someone in China; they are never going to be able to affect someone in 2132 the way Rilke can.
And that specialness needs to be acknowledged; that specialness needs to be upheld; it needs to be rewarded, and people need to say, 'Goddamn – that's a good thing! It's a good thing that people make art!”
― Dan Schneider

“Ninguém o pode aconselhar ou ajudar, — ninguém.
Não há senão um caminho. Procure entrar em si mesmo. Investigue o motivo que o manda escrever; examine se estende suas raízes pelos recantos mais profundos de sua alma; confesse a si mesmo: morreria, se lhe fosse vedado escrever? Isto acima de tudo: pergunte a si mesmo na hora mais tranqüila de sua noite: "Sou mesmo forçado a escrever?” Escave dentro de si uma resposta profunda. Se for afirmativa, se puder contestar àquela pergunta severa por um forte e simples "sou", então construa a sua vida de acordo com esta necessidade. Sua vida, até em sua hora mais indiferente e anódina, deverá tornar-se o sinal e o testemunho de tal pressão”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a Um Jovem Poeta

“Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum
von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein,
hebst du ganz langsam einen schwarzen Baum
und stellst ihn vor den Himmel: schlank, allein.
Und hast die Welt gemacht. Und sie ist groß
und wie ein Wort, das noch im Schweigen reift.
Und wie dein Wille ihren Sinn begreift,
lassen sie deine Augen zärtlich los ...”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“If your love for […] wants to do something now, then its work and task is this: to catch up with what it has missed. For it has failed to see whither this person has gone, it has failed to accompany her in her broadest development, it has failed to spread itself out over the new distances this person embraces, and it hasn’t ceased looking for her at a certain point in her growth, it wants obstinately to hold fast to a definite beauty beyond which she has passed, instead of persevering, confident of new shared beauties to come.”

—from letter to Paula Modersohn-Becker Bremen (February 12, 1902)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Everything assigned to us is a challenge; nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Suddenly your eye, which was already preparing itself for larger dimensions, goes about willingly with little, hesitating, hearkening steps over the many overgrown paths of a long dead experience and stands still by all its landmarks reverently and respectfully. And has forgotten the world, and has no world but a face. I know exactly everything you said then. The figure of the old lady who speaks rarely and reservedly, who hides her hands when a gesture of tenderness would move them, and who only with rare caresses builds bridges to a few people, bridges that no longer exist when she draws back her arm and lies again like an island fantastically repeated on all sides in the mirror of motionless waters. My eyes too were already caught up in the radiance and bound to great and deep beauties.”

―from letter to Clara Westhoff Schmargendorf bei Berlin (October 18, 1900)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910

“In a case like this, the thing is (in my own opinion) to draw back upon oneself, and not to strive after any other being, not to relate the suffering, occasioned by both, to the cause of the suffering (which lies so far outside) but to make it fruitful for oneself. If you transfer what goes on in your emotion into solitude and do not bring your vacillating and tremulous feeling into the dangerous proximity of magnetic forces, it will, through its inherent flexibility, assume of its own accord the position that is natural and necessary to it. In any case, it helps to remind oneself very often that over everything that exists there are laws which never fail to operate, which come rushing, rather, to manifest and prove themselves upon every stone and upon every feather we let fall.

So all erring consists simply in the failure to recognize the natural laws to which we are subject in the given instance, and every solution begins with our alertness and concentration, which gently draw us into the chain of events and restore to our will its balancing counterweights..."

―from letter to Emanuel von Bodman Westerwede bei Bremen (August 17, 1901)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910

“Δέ μπορῶ νά μπῶ στήν τεχνική τῶν στίχων σας: κάθε εἴδους κριτική βλέψη εἶναι κάτι τόσο ξένο ἀπό μένα...
Ἡ κριτική εἶναι τό χειρότερο μέσο γιἀ ν΄ἀγγίξεις ἕνα ἕργο τέχνης : καταντάει πάντα σέ πετυχημένες, λίγο ἥ πολύ, παρανοήσεις.
Δέ μποροῦμε ὅλα νά τά συλλάβουμε καί νά τά ἐκφράσουμε - ὅσο κι ἄν θέλουν πολλοί νά μᾶς πείσουν γιά τό ἀντίθετο.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Γράμματα σ' έναν νέο ποιητή / Γράμματα σε μια νέα γυναίκα

“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]”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, 88 Gedichte

“Un giorno fra tanti tu capirai che cosa sei veramente per me. Ciò che una sorgente alpina è per l'assetato.
E se chi muore di sete è buono e riconoscente, non si disseterà riacquistando vigore alla sua limpidezza e alla sua frescura, per poi riprendere il cammino nel nuovo sole; costruirà invece al suo riparo, e tanto vicino da poterne udire il canto, una capanna, e rimarrà nella valle prativa finché i suoi occhi siano stanchi di sole e il cuore gli trabocchi di ricchezza e di comprensione. Io edifico capanne e - rimango.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“This, then, is the beast that has never actually been:
not having seen one, they prized in any case
its perfect poise, its throat, the straightforward gaze it gave them back—so straightforward, so serene.

Since it had never been, it was all the more
unsullied. And they allowed it such latitude
that, in a clearing in the wood,
it raised its head as if its essence shrugged off mere

existence. They brought it on, not with oats or corn,
but with the chance, however slight,
that it would come on its own. This gave it such strength

that from its brow there sprang a horn. A single horn.
Only when it met a maiden’s white with white
Would it be bodied out in her, in her mirror’s full length.”
― Paul Muldoon, Hay

“I heard the voice in Rilke's throat
in Paris.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“I recited segments of Rilke's verses
as psalm interludes for a woman
without a map, welcomed by blurry
mornings with fogged windowpanes.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“Rilke spoke of the moving space
between trees.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta