At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

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Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight of being no one's sleep under so many lids.

Selected works: Complete works: Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke in 12 Bänden. Complete Works in 12 Volumes, published by Rilke Archive in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, edited by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main - 1976 Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke - Works. Annotated edition in four volumes with supplementary fifth volume, published by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Dorothea Lauterbach, Horst Nalewski and August Stahl. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig - 1996 and 2003 Volumes of poetry: Leben und Lieder - Life and Songs - 1894 Larenopfer - Lares' Sacrifice - 1895 Traumgekrönt - Dream-Crowned - 1897 Advent - Advent - 1898 Mir zur Feier - To me Only Celebration - 1909 Das Stunden-Buch - The Book of Hours Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben - The Book of Monastic Life - 1899 Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft - The Book of Pilgrimage - 1901 Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode - The Book of Poverty and Death - 1903 Das Buch der Bilder - The Book of Images - 4 Parts, 1902–1906 Neue Gedichte - New Poems - 1907 Duineser Elegien - Duino Elegies - 1922 Sonette an Orpheus - Sonnets to Orpheus - 1922 Prose: Geschichten vom Lieben Gott - Stories of God - Collection of tales, 1900 Auguste Rodin - 1903 Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke - The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke - Lyric story, 1906 Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Novel, 1910 Letters: Collected letters: Gesammelte Briefe in sechs Bänden - Collected Letters in Six Volumes, published by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber. Leipzig - 1936–1939 Briefe - Letters, published by the Rilke Archive in Weimar. Two volumes, Wiesbaden - 1950, reprinted 1987 in single volume. Briefe in Zwei Bänden - Letters in Two Volumes - Horst Nalewski, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1991 Other volumes of letters: Briefe an Auguste Rodin - Insel Verlag, 1928 Briefwechsel mit Marie von Thurn und Taxis, two volumes, edited by Ernst Zinn with a forward by Rudolf Kassner - Editions Max Niehans, 1954 Briefwechsel mit Thankmar von Münchhausen 1913 bis 1925 - Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2004 Briefwechsel mit Rolf von Ungern-Sternberg und weitere Dokumente zur Übertragung der Stances von Jean Moréas - Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2002 Translations: Selections: Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets To Orpheus translated by A. Poulin, Jr. - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975 The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell, Introduction by Robert Hass - Vintage; Reissue edition 13 March 1989 Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Robert Bly New York, 1981 The Unknown Rilke, trans. Franz Wright - Oberlin College Press, expanded ed. 1990 The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems, trans. David Young - Oberlin College Press, 1994 The Essential Rilke, ed. and trans. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann - Hopewell, NJ, 1999 Uncollected Poems, trans. Edward Snow - North Point Press, New York, 1996 The Poetry of Rilke, trans. Edward Snow - North Point Press, New York, 2009 Two Prague Stories, trans. Isabel Cole - Vitalis, Český Těšín, 2002 Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry, ed. and trans. Annemarie S. Kidder - Livonia, MI 2005 Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to a young poet: Box set, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell "Rilke's Late Poetry: Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus, and Selected Last Poems", ed. and trans. Graham Good - Ronsdale Press, Vancouver B.C., 2005 Duino Elegies: Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino, trans. Vita Sackville-West - Hogarth Press, London, 1931 Duino Elegies, trans. J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender - W. W. Norton, New York, 1939 Duino Elegies, trans. Jessie Lemont - Fine Editions Press, New York, 1945 Duineser Elegien: The Elegies of Duino, trans. Nora Wydenbruck - Amandus, Vienna, 1948 Duinesian Elegies, trans. Elaine E. Boney - University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975 Duino Elegies, trans. David Young - W. W. Norton, New York, 1978 Duino Elegies, trans. Gary Miranda - Azul Editions, Falls Church, VA, 1996 Duino Elegies, trans. Robert Hunter w/ block prints by Mareen Hunter - Hulogosi Press, 1989. Duino-Elegieë trans. H.J. Pieterse from German to Afrikaans - Protea, Pretoria, 2007 ISBN 978-1-86919-151-1 [edit]Sonnets to Orpheus Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes and commentary J.B. Leishman - Hogarth Press, London, 1936 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. C. F. MacIntyre, - U.C. Berkeley Press, 1961 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. M.D. Herder Norton - W. W. Norton, New York, 1962 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Jessie Lemont - Fine Editions PRess, New York, 1945 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes Stephen Mitchell - Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes and commentary Edward Snow - North Point Press, New York, 2004ISBN: [0865477213] Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Willis Barnstone - Shambhala Publications, Boston, 2004 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Leslie Norris and Alan Keele - ed. Lucien Jenkins - Camden House, Inc 1989 Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Robert Hunter[15] Orpheus, trans. Don Paterson - Faber, 2006 [edit]Other works Stories of God, trans. M.D. Herter Norton - W. W. Norton, New York, 1932 ISBN 0-393-30882-0 Stories of God, trans. Michael H. Kohn - Shambhala, Boston, 2003 ISBN 978-1-59030-038-1 Stories of God, trans. Various, edited by Jack Beacham - Aventure Works, Hudson, Ohio, 2009 ISBN 1-4392-2561-3 Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M.D. Herter Norton - W.W. Norton, New York, 1934 ISBN 0-393-31039-6 Poems from The Book of Hours trans. Babette Deutsch - New Directions, New York, 1941 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. M.D. Herter Norton - W.W. Norton, New York, 1949 ISBN 0-393-30881-2 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. Stephen Mitchell - New York, 1983 The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christophe Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell - Graywolf Press, 1985 ISBN 0-915308-77-0 The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, trans. Annemarie S. Kidder - Evanston, 2001 Larenopfer, trans. and commentary by Alfred de Zayas, with drawings by Martin Andrysek - Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005, 2nd revised and enlarged edition with a preface by Ralph Freedman, 2008 Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary, trans. Susan Ranson, edited with an introduction and notes by Ben Hutchinson - Camden House, New York/Boydell & Brewer Ltd, Woodbridge, UK, 2008 ISBN 978-1-57113-380-9 Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God; translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy; New York: Riverhead Books- 1996; ISBN 1-59448-156-3

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All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

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Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

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Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

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When I saw others straining toward God, I did not understand it, for though I may have had him less than they did, there was no one blocking the way between him and me, and I could reach his heart easily. It is up to him, after all, to have us, our part consists of almost solely in letting him grasp us.

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This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.

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There 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.

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