[Whoever has no house will never build one now.]
Whoever is alone now will remain so,
will stay awake, read books, write long letters
and wander restless back and forth,
among the tree-lined streets, as the leaves drift down.

    — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Autumn Day”, translated by Edward Snow

For the god
wants to know himself in you.

    — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “As once the winged energy of delight,” trans. Stephen Mitchell

[More than we experienced has gone by.]
And the future holds the most remote event
in union with what we most deeply want.

    — “[II]” (Appendix to The Sonnets to Orpheus) by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell

I felt each sharp prick of his playing,
and it was: as if a rain fell on me
in which all things change.

    — “Fragments from Lost Days” by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Edward Snow

[… perhaps all live on.] But only as thought.

    — Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Edward Snow), from “Sonnets to Orpheus” (II, 22)

Alone over the land
song hallows and heals.

    — Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Edward Snow), from “Sonnets to Orpheus” (I, 19)