Rilke Quotes

“Afterward, Isabel drove me home and I shut myself in the study with Rilke, and I read and I wanted.

And leaving you (there arent words to untangle it)
Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,
So that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes
understanding
Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star

I was beginning to undertand poetry.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Rilke wrote: 'These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.”
― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

“She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“And leaving you (there aren't words to untangle it)
Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,
so that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes understanding,
Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Again and Again, however, we know the language of love, and the little churchyard with its lamenting names and the staggeringly secret abyss in which others find their end: again and again the two of us go out under the ancient trees, make our bed again and again between the flowers, face to face with the skies”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know every bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“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

“Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant path, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with 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 one
to 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 seni
Solumanı 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, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Their train speeds through the cities and crosses rivers until it reaches Paris. They leave the station, their arms around each other, and walk to the Jardin des Plantes where the panther paces the length of his cage. The young teacher nods as Hannelore Beier reaches into the cage, and strokes the animal's magnificent neck. The panther arches his back. A curtain lifts from his pupils as the pastor's sister slides aside the bolt that has kept him in captivity. His eyes like sudden, green flames, he recognizes a world beyond the bars of his cage.”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“ستوجد المرأة يوماً ما، في زمنٍ لا يعني فيه اسمها شيئاً عكس الذكورة وحسب، بل شيئاً خاصاً بنفسه، شيئاً يُفكَّر فيه ويوصَف بكلماتٍ لا تهدف إلى التحديد والشمول، بل إلى الحياة والوجود”
― راينر ماريا ريلكه

“Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

(Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter
dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht.
Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.

(Gieb deine Schönheit immer hin
ohne Rechnen und Reden.
Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin.
Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn,
kommt endlich über jeden.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like night around their order's star and gem
And growing ever darker, stony-faced,
And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped
High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,
Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:
How they surround each one of these who stopped
To read and contemplate the objects d'art,
Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.

Whit exquisite decorum they allow us
A life of whose dimensions we seem sure
And which they cannot grasp. They were alive
To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,
That is to be of darkness and to strive.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-true Verse Translations with Facing Originals, Commentary and Compact Biography

“Yes — the springtime needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it.

(Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl. Es muteten manche
Stirme dir zu, dass du sie spürtest.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being . . . . It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, "invisibly," inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“All who seek you
test you.
And those who find you
bind you to image and gesture.

I would rather sense you
as the earth senses you.
In my ripening
ripens
what you are.

I need from you no tricks
to prove you exist.
Time, I know,
is other than you.

No miracles, please.
Just let your laws
become clearer
from generation to generation.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us:
“Yes, you’ve entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime
is filled with you . . . " — what does it matter? they can’t contain us,
we vanish inside them and around them.

(Denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen; ach wir
atmen uns aus und dahin; von Holzglut zu Holzglut
geben wir schwachern Geruch. Da sagt uns wohl einer:
ja, du gehst mir ins Blut, dieses Zimmer, der Frühling
füllt sich mit dir . . . Was hilfts, er kann uns nicht halten,
wir schwinden inihm und um ihn.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“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.

(Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Death is great.
We are his completely
with laughing eyes.
When we feel ourselves immersed in life,
he dares to weep
immersed in us.

(Der Tod ist groß.
Wir sind die Seinen
lachenden Munds.
Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen,
wagt er zu weinen
mitten in uns.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“Ninguém o pode aconselhar ou ajudar, — ninguém.
Não há senão um caminho. Procure entrar em si mesmo. Investigue o motivo que o manda escrever; examine se estende suas raízes pelos recantos mais profundos de sua alma; confesse a si mesmo: morreria, se lhe fosse vedado escrever? Isto acima de tudo: pergunte a si mesmo na hora mais tranqüila de sua noite: "Sou mesmo forçado a escrever?” Escave dentro de si uma resposta profunda. Se for afirmativa, se puder contestar àquela pergunta severa por um forte e simples "sou", então construa a sua vida de acordo com esta necessidade. Sua vida, até em sua hora mais indiferente e anódina, deverá tornar-se o sinal e o testemunho de tal pressão”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a Um Jovem Poeta

“Out of infinite desires rise
finite deeds like weak fountains
that fall back in early trembling arcs.
But those, which otherwise in us
keep hidden, our happy strengths —
they come forth in these dancing tears.

(Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen,
die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen.
Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen,
unsere fröhlichen kräfte — zeigen
sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde.
Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag.
Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde?
mit meiner Nacht? mit meinem Tag?
Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus,
keine Stelle auf der ich lebe.
Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe,
werden reich und geben mich aus.
[Der Dichter]”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, 88 Gedichte

“What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied
your self, would disappear into that vastness.)

Space reaches from us and construes the world:
to know a tree, in its true element,
throw inner space around it, from that pure
abundance in you. Surround it with restraint.
It has no limits. Not till it is held
in your renouncing is it truly there.

(Durch den sich Vögel werfen, ist nicht der
vertraute Raum, der die Gestalt dir steigert.
(Im Freien, dorten, bist du dir verweigert
und schwindest weiter ohne Wiederkehr.)

Raum greift aus uns und übersetzt die Dinge:
daß dir das Dasein eines Baums gelinge,
wirf Innenraum um ihn, aus jenem Raum,
der in dir west. Umgib ihn mit Verhaltung.
Er grenzt sich nicht. Erst in der Eingestaltung
in dein Verzichten wird er wirklich Baum.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“And we: spectators, always, everywhere,
turned toward the world of objects, never outward.
It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down.
We rearrange it, then break down ourselves.

(Und wir: Zuschauer, immer, uberall,
dem allen zugewandt und nie hinaus!
Uns uberfullts. Wir ordnens. es zerfallt.
Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Progress

And again my inmost life rushes louder,
as if it moved now between steeper banks.
Objects become ever more related to me,
and all pictures ever more perused.
I feel myself more trusting in the nameless:
with my senses, as with birds, I reach
into the windy heavens from the oak,
and into the small ponds' broken-off day
my feeling sinks, as if it stood on fishes.

(Fortschritt

Und wieder rauscht mein tiefes Leben lauter,
als ob es jetzt in breitern Ufern ginge.
Immer verwandter werden mir die Dinge
und alle Bilder immer angeschauter.
Dem Namenlosen fühl ich mich vertrauter:
Mit meinen Sinnen, wie mit Vögeln, reiche
ich in die windigen Himmel aus der Eiche,
und in den abgebrochnen Tag der Teiche
sinkt, wie auf Fischen stehend, mein Gefühl.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“Una obra de arte es buena cuando brota de la necesidad. En esa índole de su origen está su juicio: no hay otro.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Cartas a un joven poeta/Obra poética

“Questo più umano amore somiglierà a quello che noi con lotta faticosa prepariamo, all’amore che in questo consiste: che due solitudini si custodiscano, delimitino e salutino a vicenda.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Lettere a un giovane poeta/Lettere a una giovane signora/Su Dio

“Ich. Ich: far from Auge, the eye. Sounds like licht, which is light, or dicht, which is dense - I, the dense light of my eyeball that strives to look forward only.”
― Aria Aber, Hard Damage

“Kafka, Tolstoy, Plath, Hemingway, Neruda, and Rilke are all masters of writing. They are history. Read the writings of the present generation poets & writers, before they become history!”
― Avijeet Das