Quotes From "Duino Elegies" By Rainer Maria Rilke

But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ---And we, who always think of happinessrising, would feel the emotionthat almost baffles uswhen a happy thing falls. Rainer Maria Rilke

Look: the trees exist; the houseswe dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only wepass by it all, like a rush of air. And everything conspires to keep quiet about us, half out of shame perhaps, half out of some secret hope. Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn’t it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere. Rainer Maria Rilke

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

But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother, stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation. Not for your mouth, you who hold him now, did his lips ripen into these fervent contours. Do you really think your quiet footstepscould have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind? True, you startled his heart; but older terrorsrushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions. Call him . . you'll never quite retrieve him from those dark consorts. Yes, he wants to, he escapes; relieved, he makes a homein your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself anew. But did he ever begin himself? . Rainer Maria Rilke

Who shows a child, just as they are? Who sets itin its constellation, and gives the measureof distance into its hand? Who makes a child’s deathout of grey bread, that hardens, - or leaves itinside its round mouth like the coreof a shining apple? Killers areeasy to grasp. But this: death, the whole of death, before life, to hold it so softly, and not live in anger, cannot be expressed. Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn’t it time that, loving, we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured:as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight, something more than itself? Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn't it time that, in love, we freed ourselves from the loved one and, trembling, endured:as the arrow endures the string, collecting itselfto be more than itself as it shoots? Rainer Maria Rilke

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor futurelessens .. .. Superabundant existencewells in my heart. Rainer Maria Rilke

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its home. Speak and attest. More than everthe things we can live with are falling away, and ousting them, filling their place, a will with no image. Will beneath crusts which readily crackwhenever the act inside swells and seeks new borders. Rainer Maria Rilke

A kind of memory that tells usthat what we're now striving for was oncenearer and truer and attached to uswith infinite tenderness. Here all is distance, there it was breath. After the first homethe second one seems draughty and strangely sexed. Rainer Maria Rilke

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence. For beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear. Rainer Maria Rilke

Even when the lights go out, even when someone says to me: "It's over---, " even when from the stage a gray gust of emptiness drifts toward me, even when not one silent ancestor sits beside me anymore---not a woman, not even the boy with the brown squint-eye: I'll sit here anyway. One can always watch. Rainer Maria Rilke

Weren’t you alwaysdistracted by expectation, as if every eventannounced a beloved? (Where can you find a placeto keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside yougoing and coming and often staying all night.)… Rainer Maria Rilke

Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have beenthis once, completely, even if only once:to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. Rainer Maria Rilke

O smile, going where? O upturned look:new, warm, receding surge of the heart--;alas, we are that surge. Does then the cosmic spacewe dissolve in taste of us? Do the angelsreclaim only what is theirs, their own outstreamed existence, or sometimes, by accident, does a bit of usget mixed in? Are we blended in their featureslike the slight vagueness that complicates the looksof pregnant women? Unnoticed by them in theirwhirling back into themselves? (How could they notice?) . Rainer Maria Rilke

And these thingsthat 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

For our part, when we feel, we evaporate; ah, we breatheourselves out and away; with each new heartfirewe give off a fainter scent. True, someone may tell us:you're in my blood, this room, Spring itselfis filled with you .. . To what end? He can't hold us, we vanish within him and around him. Rainer Maria Rilke

We only pass everything by like a transposition of air. Rainer Maria Rilke