The Selected Poetry Of Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes
"Everything is far and long gone by. I think that the star glittering above me has been dead for a million years."
"I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky."
"Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by. Now overlap the sundials with your shadows, and on the meadows let the wind go free."
"Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone."
"The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees."
"In me there is an endless outcry and I can’t tell what’s crying, whether it’s my broken heart or my bowels."
"Then Wine held this and held that for me till I came to depend on him totally."
"My soul itself may be straight and good; ah, but my heart, my bent-over blood, all the distortions that hurt me inside."
"His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else."
"Out of your forehead branch and lyre climb, and all your features pass in simile."
"This laboring through what is still undone, as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way."
"She sat just like the others at the table. But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup a little differently."
"You feel it creeping closer to the window, in total silence."
"The night, in the uncurtained window-frame, was pitiless. And one without a name lay clean and naked there, and gave commands."
"Oh the Neptune inside our blood, with his appalling trident."
"Do you really think that your gentle steps could have shaken him with such violence?"
"Yes, you did frighten his heart; but more ancient terrors plunged into him at the shock of that feeling."
"Ah, where are the years when you shielded him just by placing your slender form between him and the surging abyss?"
"Loved his interior world, his interior wilderness."
"Loving, he waded down into more ancient blood, to ravines where Horror lay, still glutted with his fathers."
"No, we don’t accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love."
"O trees of life, when does your winter come?"
"But we, while we are intent upon one object, already feel the pull of another. Conflict is second nature to us."
"Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart’s curtain?"
"We are already free, and were dismissed where we thought we soon would be at home."
"You, who are almost protection where no one protects."
"Yet how alien, alas, are the streets of the city of grief."
"How much you hid from him then. The room that filled with suspicion at night: you made it harmless."
"And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing."
"Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one, you can’t impress him with glorious emotion."
"This silent commerce, when life is no longer willing to endure one of our kind, when it seizes him in its grip, avenges itself, kills."
"But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing."
"Dies weckt mich nachts oft wie ein Dieb, der einbricht."
"Sag, soll ich reisen? Hast du irgendwo ein Ding zurückgelassen, das sich quält und das dir nachwill?"
"Ich will mir von den Gärtnern viele Blumen hersagen lassen, dass ich in den Scherben der schönen Eigennamen einen Rest herüberbringe von den hundert Düften."
"Und sahst dich selbst zuletzt wie eine Frucht, nahmst dich heraus aus deinen Kleidern, trugst dich vor den Spiegel, ließest dich hinein bis auf dein Schauen."
"So ohne Neugier war zuletzt dein Schaun und so besitzlos, von so wahrer Armut, dass es dich selbst nicht mehr begehrte: heilig."
"Denn da’s getan war, wolltest du belohnt sein, wie Kinder, wenn sie bittersüßen Tee getrunken haben, der vielleicht gesund macht."
"Denn dieses Leiden dauert schon zu lang, und keiner kanns; es ist zu schwer für uns, das wirre Leiden von der falschen Liebe."
"Denn das ist Schuld, wenn irgendeines Schuld ist: die Freiheit eines Lieben nicht vermehren um alle Freiheit, die man in sich aufbringt."
"Wir haben, wo wir lieben, ja nur dies: einander lassen; denn dass wir uns halten, das fällt uns leicht und ist nicht erst zu lernen."
"Langsam nennt sie die Klage:—Hier, siehe: den Reiter, den Stab, und das vollere Sternbild nennen sie: Fruchtkranz."
"Die Quelle der Freude. In Ehrfurcht nennt sie sie, sagt:—Bei den Menschen ist sie ein tragender Strom."
"Stehn am Fuß des Gebirgs. Und da umarmt sie ihn, weinend."
"Einsam steigt er dahin, in die Berge des Ur-Leids."
"Aber erweckten sie uns, die unendlich Toten, ein Gleichnis, siehe, sie zeigten vielleicht auf die Kätzchen der leeren Hasel, die hängenden, oder meinten den Regen, der fällt auf dunkles Erdreich im Frühjahr."
"Und wir, die an steigendes Glück denken, empfänden die Rührung, die uns beinah bestürzt, wenn ein Glückliches fällt."
"Denn nur zum Rühmen noch steht mir das Herz, so gewaltig weiß ich die Welt. Und selbst meine Klage wird mir zur Preisung dicht vor dem stöhnenden Herzen."
"Sage mir keiner, daß ich die Gegenwart nicht liebe; ich schwinge in ihr; sie trägt mich, sie giebt mir diesen geräumigen Tag, den uralten Werktag."
"Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung! O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr!"
"Errichtet keinen Denkstein. Laßt die Rose nur jedes Jahr zu seinen Gunsten blühn."
"First of all, a negative one: that it would never behave affectedly."
"These puppets need the ground only in order to touch it lightly, like elves."
"In the world of Nature, the dimmer and weaker intellect grows, the more radiantly and imperiously grace emerges."
"We see that in the world of Nature, the dimmer and weaker intellect grows, the more radiantly and imperiously grace emerges."
"Grace appears most purely in that human form in which consciousness is either nonexistent or infinite, i.e., in the marionette or in the god."
"Does that mean that we must eat again of the Tree of Knowledge in order to fall back into the state of innocence?"
"That is the last chapter in the history of the world."
"From my earliest youth, I have felt the intuition that at some deeper cross-section of this pyramid of consciousness, mere being could become an event."
"What birds plunge through is not the intimate space."