Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke—better known as Rainer Maria Rilke—was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical". His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief,...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 December 1875
CountryGermany
childhood remember longing
Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing?" I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.
sex childhood needs
Sex is difficult, yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged...If you only recognize this and manage out of yourself, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom) then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your best possession.
heart childhood looks
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.
greatness childhood doe
Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.
childhood purpose growing
I prayed to rediscover my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be, and that growing older has served no purpose at all.
thinking blood childhood
All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.
mean childhood thousand
To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.
hold lie nights soft themselves
These soft nights hold me like themselves aloft and I lie without a lover.
beautiful deepest dragons help helpless lives perhaps princesses terrible waiting wants
...perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
against among beauty beginning consumed cried hear pressed suddenly terror
Who if I cried out, would hear me among the angel's hierarchies?and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:I would be consumed in that overwhelming existenceFor beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure.and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
enormous evening space step whoever
Whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well. Enormous space is near.
beautiful friends-or-friendship glad helps realize
I'm so glad you're here. . .it helps me realize how beautiful my world is.
cute-love far given heart love noticing patience point questions search someday sweet-love themselves unresolved
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point it, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
almost blocking christian consists grasp heart less letting others reach saw solely though toward understand
When I saw others straining toward God, I did not understand it, for though I may have had him less than they did, there was no one blocking the way between him and me, and I could reach his heart easily. It is up to him, after all, to have us, our part consists of almost solely in letting him grasp us.