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For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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Rainer Maria Rilke
Age: 51 †
Born: 1875
Born: December 4
Died: 1926
Died: December 29
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Praha
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
René Maria Cäsar Rilke
Rainer Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Li-erh-kʻo
Rainer Maria Rielke
René Rilke
Rainer Mariyah Rilḳeh
Rainŏ Maria Rilkʻe
Reiner Marie Rilke
Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Rene Rilke
Terrible
Amazes
Beauty
Disdain
Able
Barely
Nothing
Terror
Every
Destroy
Endure
Angel
Disdains
Beginning
Serenely

More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

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Dying is strange and hard if it is not our death, but a death that takes us by storm, when we've ripened none within us.
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He who does not at some time, with definite determination consent to the terribleness of life, or even exalt in it, never takes possession of the inexpressible fullness of the power of our existence.
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Earth, is not this what you will: in us to rise up invisible? Is it, O Earth, not your dream once to be wholly invisible? Earth! Invisible! What, if not change, is your desperate mission?
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Fame — the aggregate of all the misunderstandings that collect around a new name.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches for the Creator, there is no poverty.
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I never read anything concerning my work. I feel that criticism is a letter to the public which the author, since it is not directed to him, does not have to open and read.
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Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and move to broader deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change the world.
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I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
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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.
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Young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.
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We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.
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Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.
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You must think that something is happening upon you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand it will not let you fall.
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Trees do not force their sap, nor does the flower push its bloom.
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This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love the more they give, the more they possess of that precious nourishing love from which flowers and children have their strength and which could help all human beings if they would take it without doubting.
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
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Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.
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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
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Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness.
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There are no classes in life for beginners right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke