Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Dont take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Sometimes she walks through the village in herlittle red dressall absorbed in restraining herself,and yet, despite herself, she seems to moveaccording to the rhythm of her life to come.She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,half-turns around...and, all while dreaming, shakes her headfor or against.Then she dances a few stepsthat she invents and forgets,no doubt finding out that lifemoves on too fast.Its not so much that she steps outof the small body enclosing her,but that all she carries in herselffrolics and ferments.Its this dress that shell rememberlater in a sweet surrender;when her whole life is full of risks,the little red dress will always seem right.

Read the lines as if they were unknown to you, and you will feel in your inmost self how very much they are yours.

If you think your world isn’t poetic enough, or exciting enough to tell a story about, that’s not because it’s a dull world, that’s because you’re not poet enough to wake its soul up.

How he loved and yetwished to leave you: always both, at once.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

For our part, when we feel, we evaporate; ah, we breatheourselves out and away; with each new heartfirewe give off a fainter scent. True, someone may tell us:youre in my blood, this room, Spring itselfis filled with you . . . To what end? He cant hold us,we vanish within him and around him.

THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayersstopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witnessthe unbelievable: for there before him stoodthe legendary creature, startling white, thathad approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced abody wrought of finest ivory. And ashe moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the signof his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, whenopened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly:he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.His eyes looked far beyond the saints enclosure,reflecting vistas and events long vanished,and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.

In the room...they are inside the books. They move sometimes within the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams.

Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name.

Fame is nothing but the sum of all the misunderstandings that cluster around a new name…Wherever a human achievement becomes truly great, it seeks to hide its face in the lap of general, nameless greatness.

I believe that that love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and i have been circling for a thousand years. And I still dont know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song.

For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, webreathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,yielding us fainter fragrance.

(...) there are these fading, ageing girls who constantly let themselves go over the edge without resisting, strong girls, still unused in their innermost selves, who have never been loved. Perhaps, Lord, you mean me to leave everything and go love them. Otherwise why is it so difficult for me not to follow them when they pass me in the street? Why do I suddenly invent the sweetest, most nocturnal words, and why does my voice settle sweetly inside me between my throat and heart? Why do I imagine how I, with unutterable caution, would hold them to my breath, these dolls that life has been playing with, flinging their arms apart springtime after springtime for nothing, and again for nothing, until they became slack in the shoulders. Theyve never fallen from a very high hope, so theyre not broken; but theyre badly chipped already and too far gone. Only stray cats come to them in the evening in their rooms and keep giving them furtive scratches and then sleep on top of them. Sometimes I follow one of them down a couple of streets. They walk past the houses, people are continually coming along who blot them out, they go on fading until they are nothing.

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,like winter, which even now is passing.For beneath the winter is a winter so endlessthat to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.Climb praising as you return to connection.Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.The emptiness inside you allows you to vibratein full resonance with your world. Use it for once.To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayablenumbers of beings abounding in Nature,add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

Praise, my dear one.Let us disappear into praising.Nothing belongs to us.