O trees of life, O when are you wintering?We are not unified. We have no instinctslike those of migratory birds. Useless, and late,we force ourselves, suddenly, onto the wind,and fall down to an indifferent lake.We realise flowering and fading together.And somewhere lions still roam. Never knowing,as long as they have their splendour, of any weakness.
Rainer Maria RilkeAs the arrow endures the string, and in the gathering momentum becomes more than itself. Because to stay is to be nowhere.
Rainer Maria RilkeJoy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.
Rainer Maria RilkeMy art is representational by choice....if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate.
Rainer Maria RilkeBut 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 RilkeYoung people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.
Rainer Maria RilkeMy life is not this steeply sloping hour, in which you see me hurrying. Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree; I am only one of my many mouths, and at that, the one that will be still the soonest. I am the rest between two notes, which are somehow always in discord because Deathโs note wants to climb overโ but in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling. And the song goes on, beautiful.
Rainer Maria Rilke