Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes (76 Quotes)




    God...sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it... and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.

    Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.

    Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point it, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.


    Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.

    ... denn da ist keine Stelle,die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben andern.(... for there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life.)

    It's this dress that she'll remember
    later in a sweet surrender;
    when her whole life is full of risks,
    the little red dress will always seem right.

    Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.

    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.

    The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.

    I'm so glad you're here. . .it helps me realize how beautiful my world is.

    You, to whom life would taste
    so bitter, Father, after you - for my sake -
    slipped of mine, that first muddy infusion
    of my necessity.

    The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

    Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart And try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers that cannot be given For you would not be able to live them And the point is to live everything Live the questions now And perhaps without knowing it You will live along some day into the answers.

    Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

    Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

    It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

    Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.

    If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

    The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.

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

    One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.


    He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.

    I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.



    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. Letters to a Young Poet.

    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.


    The loneliness of old comes over him
    which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
    now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
    and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

    For what I want to say to you is this:
    my efforts shall be like a driving force,
    quite without anger, without timidness
    as little children show their love for you.

    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.


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

    Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

    Who if I cried out, would hear me among the angel's hierarchiesand even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart; I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence; For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure. and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

    Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

    No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.


    It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

    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.

    My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
    will deprive me, for it is infinite.


    We have no reason
    to show death admiration, love or hate;
    his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

    Whoever you are some evening take a step out of your house, which you know so well. Enormous space is near.

    Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.

    For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences. And whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.

    I feel it now...there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world. I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it.


    More Rainer Maria Rilke Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Life - World - Love - Art - Danger & Risk - Literature - People - Experience - Future - Work & Career - Marriage - Belief & Faith - Fate & Destiny - Dogs - Poets - Summer - Spring - Night - Drawing & Painting - View All Rainer Maria Rilke Quotations

    Related Authors


    John Keats - Horace - Homer - William Somerville - Sophocles - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Novalis - Euripides - Anne Sexton - Alcaeus


Page 1 of 2 1 2

Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections