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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes - Page 14

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You must change your life.

You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Changing Your Life
Rainer Maria Rilke (1940). “Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems”, p.140, Univ of California Press

And one of the things I find most moving is the way people with infirmities manage to embrace Life, and from the cool flowers by the wayside reach conclusions about the vast splendour of its great gardens. They can, if their souls' strings are finely tuned, arrive with much less effort at the feeling of eternity; for everything we do, they may dream. And precisely where our deeds end, theirs begin to bear fruit.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Dream, Flower, Moving
Rainer Maria Rilke (1998). “Diaries of a Young Poet”, p.46, W. W. Norton & Company

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Everyday, Matter, Complaining
Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.12, New World Library

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Marriage, Legs, Four

Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Change, Giving, Entering
Rainer Maria Rilke (1945). “Letters”

Go into yourself. Dig into yourself for a deep answer

Rainer Maria Rilke
Answers

I have patience for centuries in me and will live as though my time were very big.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Century, Bigs, Having Patience
Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.121, W. W. Norton & Company

It is possible I am pushing through solid rock, like the vein of ore encased, alone. I am such a long way in I can see no way through and no space. Everything is close to my face and everything close to my face is stone. I don't have much knowledge yet in grief, so this darkness makes me feel small. You, be the Master; Make yourself fierce; break in. And then your great transforming will happen to me And my great grief cry will happen to you.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Grief, Struggle, Rocks

Whoever you are: in the evening step out of your room, where you know everything; yours is the last house before the far-off: whoever you are. With your eyes, which in their weariness barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, you lift very slowly one black tree and place it against the sky: slender, alone. And you have made the world. And it is huge and like a word which grows ripe in silence. And as your will seizes on its meaning, tenderly your eyes let it go.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Eye, Sky, Silence
Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.5, North Point Press

I implore those who love me to love my solitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Solitude

The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Hero, Young, Die Young
Rainer Maria Rilke (1975). “University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures”

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

Rainer Maria Rilke
World, Enough, This World
Rainer Maria Rilke, Annemarie S. Kidder (2001). “The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God”, p.39, Northwestern University Press

most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

Rainer Maria Rilke
People, Rooms, Window

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Looks, Extravagance, Lovers
Rainer Maria Rilke (1976). “Poems, 1906 to 1926”

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk only on feelings. That faces upward and in its mirror receives heavenly roads, which travel along themselves. That has learned to walk upon water when it scoops, that walks upon wells, transfiguring every path. That steps into other hands, changes those that are like it into a landscape: wanders and arrives within them, fills them with arrival.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Hands, Mirrors, Water
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Palm”

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Tired, Acceptance, Knowing
Rainer Maria Rilke, John J. L. Mood (1994). “Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations”, p.41, W. W. Norton & Company

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Intimate
"The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke".

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
Dog, People, Worry
Rainer Maria Rilke (2005). “Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry Including "The Life of the Virgin Mary"”, Annmarie s Kidder

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

Rainer Maria Rilke
Doe, Helping, Happened
Rainer Maria Rilke (1930). “The Journal of My Other Self”

To work is to live without dying.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Work, Dying
Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.88, W. W. Norton & Company

And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. Who's turned us round like this, so that we always, do what we may, retain the attitude of someone who's departing? Just as he, on the last hill, that shows him all his valley for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, we live our lives, for ever taking leave.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Attitude, Valleys, May
Rainer Maria Rilke (1977). “Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things

Rainer Maria Rilke
Fighting, Winning, Want

Painting is something that takes place among the colors.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Color, Agility, Painting
Rainer Maria Rilke (2002). “Letters on Cézanne”, p.66, Macmillan

The artist's task consists of making one thing of many, and a world from the smallest part of a thing.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Artist, Tasks, World
Rainer Maria Rilke (2012). “Auguste Rodin”, p.50, Parkstone International

Draw near to Nature. Then try like some first human being to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Trying, And Love, Firsts

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