Quote

In the night, I wish to speak with the angel to find out if she recognizes my eyes, if she will ask me: do you see Eden? And I’ll reply: Eden burns.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Eye
Wish
Recognizes
Speak
Reply
Night
Eden
Find
Burns
Angel
Eyes
Asks

More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

Image
Nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand always already quite near its transformation.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
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.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. --- And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Our task is to take this earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
What keeps you from... living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
. . . denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben andern. (... for there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.)
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetiness into the heavenly wine.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.
Rainer Maria Rilke