we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again โinvisibly,โ inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria RilkeMay what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Rainer Maria RilkeOften a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant path, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
Rainer Maria RilkeThings aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life
Rainer Maria RilkePerhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria RilkeHis vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.
Rainer Maria Rilke