Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsSolitudeLoveLifeWorldPoetryKnowsWayPeopleHeartDifficultWantStillsGivingArtInspirationalChildhoodFeelsGriefLong

Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days. In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.”

LifeWorkStillnessIdleness
Book:Letters on Life
Create image

“No one can advise or help you- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reasons that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty- describe all these with heartfelt silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds- wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure home of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.”

LifeWritingArt
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“And your doubts can become a good quality if you school them. They must grow to be knowledgeable, they must learn to be critical. As soon as they begin to spoil something for you ask them why a thing is ugly, demand hard evidence, test them, and you will perhaps find them at a loss and short of an answer, or perhaps mutinous. But do not give in, request arguments, and act with this kind of attentiveness and consistency every single time, and the day will come when instead of being demolishers they will be among your best workers--perhaps the canniest of all those at work on the building of your life.”

LifeGrowthLearningDoubtSelf Doubt
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation. And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.”

LoveLifeSongStrengthPoetThoughtsDepthForgottenSweetnessNights
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“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.”

LifeExperiencePatienceQuestions
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”

LifeChangeSadnessDangerousDepthDieWithin
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“Entre el día y el sueño estoy en casa donde duermen los niños, tibios de correrías y los viejos se sientan por la tarde, y arden hogares y su espacio alumbran. Entre el día y el sueño estoy en casa donde suenan campanas de oración y muchachas, cohibidas por ecos que se extinguen, se apoyan fatigadas en el brocal del pozo. Y hay un tilo, que es mi árbol predilecto: y todos los veranos que en él callan se vuelven a mover en las mil ramas y entre el día y el sueño vuelven a despertar.”

LifePoemVidaPoema
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“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.”

IfsLoveLifeInspirationalHumansWholeHopeGrowsSidesHuman BeingsLove IsInspiringWonderfulRelationshipSkyLove YouSucceedAnd LoveRelationInfiniteDistanceAcceptedRealizationClosestOur LoveGreat LoveLove Each OtherHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsBeing LovedLove RelationshipFamous LoveGreatest LoveTime LoveLoving OthersHuman LoveInspiring LoveTime And LoveRelationships With OthersClose RelationshipBest Ever LoveFamily RelationshipHappy RelationshipAmazing LoveBeing AcceptedLoving RelationshipsLove And DistanceInspirational RelationshipRelationships And LifePossible LoveGetting To Know Each OtherLove Is AmazingLoving Words
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“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.”

LoveLifeHumansLastsSpiritualRomanceDifficultHuman BeingsLove IsInspiringMarriageMy HeartHeartbreakTasksTestsAnd LoveUltimateFalling In LoveProofPreparationLoved OnesOur LoveOne LoveBeing In LoveGreat LoveBest LoveBeing LovedLove One AnotherFunny RelationshipHeart LoveThose We LoveSpiritual LoveHuman LoveShort LoveDifficult TasksHearts And LoveWise LoveTrue Love Is ForeverTrue Love Conquers AllUltimate LovePerhaps LoveClassic LoveProof Of Love
Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Create image

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

LoveLifeInspirationalTryingHeartBookAblePoetryGivenAnswersRoomsWrittenPatiencePatientTongueLockedKnow YourselfBe PatientNoticingBeing SingleUnanswered QuestionsSingle Girl
Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Create image

“And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.”

WorldLifeMadeWholeHandsWould BeEarthUsedTurnsFeltMorningFireSawsEqualHarmonyWhole WorldEvery MorningAgain And AgainReplacedAnother WorldNew EarthShabby
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers-perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”

IfsWayWantLifeGivingActionTimeAsksQualityKnowledgeKnowingDoubtBuildingInspirational LifeLife PhilosophyBecomingDemandGiving UpFindingsSelf ImprovementTrainingArgumentCriticismTestsIntelligentTrainWorkersUglyProofPersistenceNovelistsProtestSelf ControlEmbarrassedSelf DisciplineImprovingDayNot Giving UpPersistentSpoilDestroyersGood QualityInsistingBewilderedGiving Up Is Not An OptionAttentiveness
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“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.”

WorldLifeShouldFirstsMayWholeHelpingFateConflictShould HaveBottomBest ThingsThings In LifeSelf RelianceRelianceExpansePerplexityBest Things In Life
Book:Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Create image

“We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard - of, must be possible in it. This is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most inexplicable.”

WayLifeExistenceStrangeAssumingBottomHave CourageInexplicableUnheard
Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Create image