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.
Rainer Maria RilkeChildren are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.
Rainer Maria RilkeWhat do the contours of your body mean, laid out like the lines on a hand, so that I no longer see them except as fate?
Rainer Maria RilkeThere are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.
Rainer Maria RilkeA 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.
Rainer Maria RilkeNo, we don't accomplish our love in a single year as the flowers do; an immemorial sap flows up through our arms when we love. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you.
Rainer Maria Rilke