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Rainer Maria Rilke

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Archive entries

01Undated

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

02Undated

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

03Undated

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

04Undated

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

05Undated

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

06Undated

That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

07Undated

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

08Undated

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

09Undated

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

10Undated

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

11Undated

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

12Undated

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

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

13Undated

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

14Undated

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

15Undated

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

16Undated

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

17Undated

And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

18Undated

Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

19Undated

You, God, who live next door--If at times, through the long night, I trouble youwith my urgent knocking--this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.I know you're all alone in that room. If you should be thirsty, there's no oneto get you a glass of water.I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!I'm right here...Sen komşu tanrı,Uzun geceler bazen,Kapına vura vura uyandırıyorsam seniSolumanı seyrek duyduğumdandır...Bilirim, yalnızsın odanda.Sana birşey gerekse kimse yok,Bir yudum su versin aradığında.Hep dinlerim, yeter ki bir ses edin,Öyle yakınım sana...

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

20Undated

I live my life in widening circleThat reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one,But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower.I have been circling for thousands of years,And I still don't know: am I a falcon,A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

21Undated

Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

22Undated

But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ---And we, who always think of happinessrising, would feel the emotionthat almost baffles uswhen a happy thing falls.

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

23Undated

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)

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote

24Undated

So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?

Rainer Maria Rilke / quote