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Favourite quotes (21448)

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

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose

“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Ten (26 December 1908)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again. But this having been once, although only once, to have been of the earth, seems irrevocable.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)…”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

“We are not allowed to linger, even with what is most intimate.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Beauty is only the start of bearable terror.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“All things want to float.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Life is heavier than the weight of all things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Variant: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Source: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“Look, I am living. On what? Neither
childhood nor future
lessens…. Superabundant existence
wells in my heart.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Source: Duino Elegies

“It’s possible, I’m moving through the hard veins of heavy mountains, like an arc, alone; I’m so deep inside, I see no end in sight, and no distance: everything is getting near and everything near is turning to stone.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing… then you are a writer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“You, darkness, of whom I am born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes the rest.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours