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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.”

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

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.”

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

“There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.”

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

“Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire,
To be no one's sleep under so many
Lids.”

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

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.
Rilke wrote his own epitaph sometime before October 27, 1925. He requested that it be inscribed on his gravestone. This was fifteen months before his death. (Translation: John J.L.Mood)
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.”

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

“Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.

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

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

Number 2 (as translated by Cliff Crego)
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
(as translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)
Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) (1905)
Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Context: I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every hour holy.
I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
just to stand before you like a thing,
dark and shrewd.
I want my will, and I want to be with my will
as it moves towards deed;
and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
when something is approaching,
I want to be with those who are wise
or else alone.