Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something that needs our love.


Rainer Maria Rilke

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It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what sho...
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There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.
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All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.
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There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when on...
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Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
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Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
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Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
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No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.
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The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
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Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.
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He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact intere...
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There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.
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Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful an...
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This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more t...
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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
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For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultima...
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Life - a sexually transmitted terminal condition.
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For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, ...
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Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart And try to love the questions themselves. -R...
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The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. ...
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Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
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I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has eve...
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The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false f...
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There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist me...
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It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things
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Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question.
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Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know every bit;
...
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It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only...
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only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incompre...
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Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr,
so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen;
die vollen ...
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Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Opennes...
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Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those w...
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I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
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How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the my...
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Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, w...
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I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
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I am too ...
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We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.
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Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with w...
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Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most ...
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Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without t...
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poe...
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The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.
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Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
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From THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS
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A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've bee...
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All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one...
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Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet wor...
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He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact intere...
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Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbel...
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Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and one has to leave them alone completely,...
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like l...
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Being in therapy is great. I spend an hour just talking about myself. It's kinda like being the guy ...
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Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to tru...
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Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day...
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do no...
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I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the question...
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Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themsel...
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like ...
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May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children...
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Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances conti...
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call ...
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And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.
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I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of...
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I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old ...
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Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
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What an unilateral life, when from the material of a renunciation, we must fashion something we love...
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And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it m...
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most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip o...
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But suppose the endlessly dead were to
wake in us some emblem:
they might point to the ca...
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There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is mos...
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it is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Natur...
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And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in ...
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The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in o...
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O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht giebt.
Sie wußtens nicht und habens jeden Falls
– s...
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Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this l...
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At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in...
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Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass ...
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The only journey is the one within.
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Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.
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So it's back once more, back up the slope.
Why do they always ruin my rope
with their cuts...
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Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep under so many
lids.
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This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more t...
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At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in eve...
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Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day i...
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For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
But not you, O girl, nor yet his
mother,
stretched his eyebrows so fierce with
expe...
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A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
A billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the prese...
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In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with maje...
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I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Everything terrible is something that needs our love.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words th...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience al...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: they always come down ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe; most event...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all...
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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And these things
that keep alive on departure know that
you praise them; transient,
...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is mo...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has be...
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We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do n...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they lo...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over t...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Truly to sing, that is a different breath.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk
only on feelings. That faces upward
and i...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul?...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it am...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to wr...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
To make myself understood and to diminish the distance between us, I called out: “I am an evening ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and sc...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Wh...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Now it was there. Now it was growing within me like a tumor, like a second head, and it was a part o...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Beauty is only the start of bearable terror.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Every angel is terrifying.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its root...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason t...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other
RAINER MARIA RILKE
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is mos...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
When I saw others straining toward God, I did not understand it, for though I may have had him less ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
That is the principle thing - not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-th...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
For it is not simply because of mere sluggishness alone that human relationships repeat themselves f...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I feel it now...there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world. I know that nothing has e...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I'm so glad you're here. . .it helps me realize how beautiful my world is.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themsel...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
RAINER MARIA RILKE
A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've bee...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone
RAINER MARIA RILKE
So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known,...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for on...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for ho...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't e...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Loving isn't merging, surrendering, uniting with the other. Rather, it's a kind of solitude; of prof...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the co...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And witho...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being:...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
God...sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it... and to know that it wa...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but t...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
There are quantities of human faces, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I am, O Anxious One. Don’t you hear my voice
surging forth with all my earthly feelings?
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Do you remember…(doesn’t that appear in each of my letters?), do you remember that you spoke of ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Here is the time for the sayable, here
is its home.
Speak and attest. More than ever
RAINER MARIA RILKE
What goes on in your innermost being is worth all your love, this is what you must work on however y...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
But this is what ... people are so often and disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very na...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rud...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case t...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circums...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And you, Clara Westhoff, how simply and well you endured, lived through the experience, and made it ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE,
Songs of longing!

And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometim...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
…As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
RAINER MARIA RILKE
…Lovers were not, Marina, *are* not permitted to know
destruction so deeply. Must be as if th...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
...We of the here-and-now are not for a moment satisfied in the world of time, nor are we bound in i...
RAINER MARIA RILKE,
Pero en esto yerran los jóvenes tan a menudo y tan gravemente. Ellos, en cuya naturaleza está el n...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Liebe ist schwer. Liebhaben von Mensch zu Mensch: das ist vielleicht das Schwerste, was uns aufgegeb...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum
von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein,
hebst du g...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling
was only a pretext for being, his latest reb...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Ninguém o pode aconselhar ou ajudar, — ninguém.
Não há senão um caminho. Procure entrar ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
After Rilke's Letters
-- by John VanDyke Wilmerding II

this is my letter to a young ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If you think your world isn’t poetic enough, or exciting enough to tell a story about, that’s no...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even no...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
wi...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable t...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
A kind of memory that tells us
that what we're now striving for was
once
nearer and ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
O smile, going where? O upturned look:
new, warm, receding surge of the heart--;
alas, we ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the o...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those th...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the futu...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, ...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I think of you at any time of the day and my worried thoughts accompany all your steps. The slightes...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Wenn der Alltag dir arm erscheint, klage ihn nicht an – klage dich an, daß du nicht stark genug b...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will si...
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundre...
RAINER MARIA RILKE