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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to. And when one day you realise that their preoccupations are meagre, their professions barren and no longer connected to life, why not continue to look on them like a child, as if on something alien, drawing on the depths of your own world, on the expanse of your own solitude, which itself is work and achievement and a vocation? Why wish to exchange a child’s wise incomprehension for rejection and contempt, when incomprehension is solitude, whereas rejection and contempt are ways of participating in what, by precisely these means, you want to sever yourself from?”

ChildhoodSolitude
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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“Oh scattered band, once my playmates, you few Who were amidst the gardens here and there in the city, How hesitantly we located one another, took fancies and Like the tapestry lamb whose mute words are on a scroll, Spoke through silence. Our little joys were Never communicated, - Whose indeed were they? And among all the passers-by, those hurriers, how it all Evanesced quite away, weighed down by the torment of the endless year. Past us were drawn the carriages, wholly indifferent, Round us the houses stood strong but not real, - and none Of these were aware of us. What was truly real in it all? Nothing. Only the balls we tossed, their magnificent arcs, But certainly not the children. ... Though sometimes one would step - Alas, one who would soon be lost, - beneath a falling ball.”

ChildhoodComing Of AgeGrowing Pains
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
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“All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.”

IfsThinkingFeelingsFacesJoySidesHoursClearBloodChildhoodPureBottomLiftsYour ChildrenJust OneIntoxicationLift You Up
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Sex is difficult, yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged...If you only recognize this and manage out of yourself, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom) then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your best possession.”

IfsWayNeedsHas BeensSexDifficultChildhoodAchieveBecomingLosingRelationPossessionManageCustomsConventionsDifficult ThingsUnworthyLosing YourselfSwagger
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing That is more than your own. Let it brush your cheeks As it divides and rejoins behind you. The trees you planted in childhood have grown Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.”

GivingFeelsBehindsAirTreeChildhoodHeavyBreathingDividesCheeksBrushesBehind You
Book:In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
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“Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.”

ThinkingWorldWayWantSelfRememberHealingChildhoodHappeningsWorthyPerceiveYearningTeensWithin You
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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