Rainer Maria Rilke citáty

page 6

„Považujem to za najvyššiu povinnosť puta medzi dvoma ľuďmi: každý z nich by mal strážiť samotu toho druhého.“

„Nech je vaše ego pórovité. Vôľa má malý význam, sťažovanie sa a sláva nič neznamenajú. Otvorenosť, trpezlivosť, vnímavosť, samota sú všetko.“

„V láske potrebujeme praktizovať iba toto: nechať druhého odísť. Pretože držať sa niekoho je ľahké; tomu sa už nemusíme učiť.“

„Zistite dôvod, ktorý prikazuje, aby ste začali písať. Zistite, či rozšíril svoje korene do hĺbky vášho srdca; a priznajte si a prijmite, že by ste museli zomrieť, ak by vám niekto zakázal písať.“

„Práca očí je hotová. Teraz choďte a pracujte na obrázkoch, ktoré sú uväznené vo vašom srdci.“

„Verte v lásku, ktorá je pre vás uložená ako dedičstvo, a verte, že v tejto láske je taká veľká sila a požehnanie, že môžete putovať tak ďaleko, ako si želáte, bez toho, aby ste museli vystúpiť z jej rámca.“

„Láska je ťažká. Milovať bez rozdielu každého - to je možno najťažšia úloha, ktorá je nám uložená, tá najzapadlejšia, posledná skúška a preverenie; práca, pre ktorú všetka ostatná práca je len prípravou.“

„Láska je jedinečná príležitosť dozrieť, nadobudnúť vlastnú tvár, stať sa svetom láske milovanej osoby.“

„Keď budeme nazývať láskou víťazstvo jedného nad druhým, radšej pôjdem.“

„Láska je lampa s nevyčerpateľným olejom.“

„Žijem svoj život v rozširujúcich sa kruhoch, ktoré sa rozprestierajú po celom svete.“

„Z úprimného srdca ťa prosím, trpezlivo znášaj všetko, čo je v tvojom srdci nedoriešené, a skús milovať otázky ako zamknuté komnaty, ako knihy napísané v celkom cudzom jazyku. Nehľadaj odpovede, ktoré ti nie je súdené poznať, lebo by si ich nevedel prežiť. A zmyslom života je prežiť všetko. Prežívaj teraz otázky.“

„Možno sú všetky príbehy nášho života iba princezné, ktoré čakajú na to, aby raz boli krásne. Možno všetko hrozné je vo svojej podstate iba bezmocné, ktoré čaká našu pomoc.“

„Vždy je najťažšie práve to, čo sa od človeka žiada, v živote niet žiadnych tried pre začiatočníkov.“

„Šťastie je dôsledkom múdrosti.“

„Chudoba je veľká žiara zvnútra.“

„Človek s ohnutou chrbticou ju sám bude ohýbať druhým a pomstiť sa tak na nich, že podľahol.“

„Naše omyly sú odnepamäti súčasťou bohatstva, ktoré máme.“

„Ruka, ktorá pohýna kolísku, hýbe svetom.“

„Všetci zomrieme na vlastnú smrť.“

„Budúcnosť vstupuje do nás, aby sa premenila v nás, skôr ako nastane.“

„Umelecké diela odlišuje od ostatných vecí to, že zároveň sú vecami času, ktorý ešte nenastal.“

„Jediná cesta je tá vo vnútri vás.“

„Ach, aké je dobré byť medzi ľuďmi, ktorí čítajú.“

„Opäť je tu jar. Zem je sťa dieťa, ktoré pozná básne naspamäť.“

„Chcem byť s tými, ktorí poznajú tajné veci, inak budem radšej sám.“

“As bees gather honey, so we collect what is sweetest out of all things and build Him. Even with the trivial, with the insignificant (as long as it is done out of love) we begin, with work and with the repose that comes afterward, with a silence or with a small solitary joy, with everything that we do alone, without anyone to join or help us, we start Him whom we will not live to see, just as our ancestors could not live to see us. And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time. Is there anything that can deprive you of the hope that in this way you will someday exist in Him, who is the farthest, the outermost limit?”

“Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.”

“Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.”

“He was a poet and hated the approximate.”

“How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark,
in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest of songs.”

“Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

“Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.”

“Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;
plug up my ears, and I can still hear;
even without feet I can walk toward you,
and without mouth I can still implore.
Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand;
strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
and should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.”

“If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.”

“His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world. His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable. But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.”

“I am so afraid of people's words.
They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.”

“Young people -it is obvious -cannot achieve such a relationship, but they can, if they understand their life properly, grow up slowly to such happiness and prepare themselves for it. They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love- must learn love, and that like all learning wants peace, patience, and composure.”

“He [Cézanne] reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there’s another dog.”

“Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in.”

“Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.”

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

“It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.”

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.”

“I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.”

“They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.”

“Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let thine shadows upon the sundials fall,
and unleash the winds upon the open fields.”

“Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.”

“No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

“A thought struck me abruptly: My God, you do exist, then. There are proofs of Your existence. I had forgotten them all, and never demanded any either, for what an overwhelming obligation would come with this certainty. And yet that is what is now being shown to me.”

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them … the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”