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For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)-they are experiences.

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
Emotion
Simply
Enough
Think
Thinking
Poems
People
Emotions
Experiences
Early

More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

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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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Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.
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One of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence.
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Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.
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I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing That is more than your own. Let it brush your cheeks As it divides and rejoins behind you. The trees you planted in childhood have grown Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty-describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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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.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Be ahead of all farewells as if they were behind you, like the winter that is just departing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So like children, we begin again... to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. (from the poem How Sure Gravity's Law)
Rainer Maria Rilke
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I believe that nothing that is real can pass away.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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More unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. Here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living beings in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves despite all opposition.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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She who reconciles the ill-matched threads Of her life, and weaves them gratefully Into a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall And clears it for a different celebration.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, Must I write?
Rainer Maria Rilke
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I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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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.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.
Rainer Maria Rilke