TOPICS
SPEAKERS
HOME
BROWSE TOPICS
BROWSE SPEAKERS
◀ BACK

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Writer
We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.
From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No, 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.

(Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme.)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
you are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
it’s own secret
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only journey is the one within.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was not in me It came and went
I wanted to hold it It was held by wine
(I no longer know what it was)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
From Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.
From Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when suddenly
the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,
uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –
she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
From Duino Elegies
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault,
we both had nothing except patience,
but Death has none.
I saw him come (how meanly!)
and I watched him as he took and took:
none of it I could claim as mine.
From The Book of Images
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.
From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No, 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.

(Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme.)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
you are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
it’s own secret
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only journey is the one within.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was not in me It came and went
I wanted to hold it It was held by wine
(I no longer know what it was)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
From Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.
From Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when suddenly
the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,
uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –
she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
From Duino Elegies
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault,
we both had nothing except patience,
but Death has none.
I saw him come (how meanly!)
and I watched him as he took and took:
none of it I could claim as mine.
From The Book of Images
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.
From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No, 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.

(Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme.)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
you are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
it’s own secret
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The only journey is the one within.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It was not in me It came and went
I wanted to hold it It was held by wine
(I no longer know what it was)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
From Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.
From Letters to a Young Poet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.
From Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And when suddenly
the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,
uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –
she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
From Duino Elegies
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault,
we both had nothing except patience,
but Death has none.
I saw him come (how meanly!)
and I watched him as he took and took:
none of it I could claim as mine.
From The Book of Images
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote