"So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp."
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Quote collection
Rainer Maria Rilke quotes (page 8 of 25)
487 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There are moments in which a rose is more important than a piece of bread"
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"Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve."
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"Our heart always transcends us."
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"A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead."
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"Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer"
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"[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed."
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"When we are only victorious over small things, it leaves us feeling small."
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"FALLING STARS: Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes -- do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play, while in our hearts we felt safe and secure watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate, knowing somehow we had survived their fall."
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"Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle."
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"Life + a cat ... adds up to an incalculable sum."
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"Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?"
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"Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom."
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"Your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes, far in the distance."
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"What is happening on your innermost self is worthy of your entire love."
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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."
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"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
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"Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."
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"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."
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"How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights! Had I only received you, inconsolable sisters, on more abject knees, only buried myself with more abandon in your loosened hair. How we waste our afflictions! We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance, hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year -- ; not only a season --: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode."
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