Quotessence
Home / Authors / Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsSolitudeLoveLifeWorldPoetryKnowsWayPeopleHeartDifficultWantStillsGivingArtInspirationalChildhoodFeelsGriefLong

Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with...”

LoveInspirationalPleasure
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being. This step forward (at first right against the will of the men who are left behind) will transform the experience of love, which is now full of error, alter its root and branch, reshape it into a relation between two human beings and no longer between man and woman. And this more human form of love (which will be performed in infinitely gentle and considerate fashion, true and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them) will resemble the one we are struggling and toiling to prepare the way for, the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another.”

LoveHumanityWomenRelationshipIndividualityGirlsWholeness
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us: “Yes, you’ve entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime is filled with you . . . " — what does it matter? they can’t contain us, we vanish inside them and around them. (Denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen; ach wir atmen uns aus und dahin; von Holzglut zu Holzglut geben wir schwachern Geruch. Da sagt uns wohl einer: ja, du gehst mir ins Blut, dieses Zimmer, der Frühling füllt sich mit dir . . . Was hilfts, er kann uns nicht halten, wir schwinden inihm und um ihn.)”

LovePoetryTimePassionEmotionEmptinessContentmentFeelingTransienceRilke
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment. And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come.”

LoveLossIndividuality
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“Yes, the Springs needed you. Many a star was waiting for your eyes only. A wave swelled toward you out of the past, or as you walked by the open window a violin inside surrendered itself to pure passion. All that was your charge. But were you strong enough? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as though each such moment presaged a beloved's coming? (But where would you keep her, with all those big strange thoughts in you going and coming and sometimes staying all night?)”

LoveWonderLivingDistractionBeing Alive
Book:Duino Elegies
Create image

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

LoveFaithRelationshipsChangeSolitudeLoved OnesAlonenessCommon Ground
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“In a case like this, the thing is (in my own opinion) to draw back upon oneself, and not to strive after any other being, not to relate the suffering, occasioned by both, to the cause of the suffering (which lies so far outside) but to make it fruitful for oneself. If you transfer what goes on in your emotion into solitude and do not bring your vacillating and tremulous feeling into the dangerous proximity of magnetic forces, it will, through its inherent flexibility, assume of its own accord the position that is natural and necessary to it. In any case, it helps to remind oneself very often that over everything that exists there are laws which never fail to operate, which come rushing, rather, to manifest and prove themselves upon every stone and upon every feather we let fall. So all erring consists simply in the failure to recognize the natural laws to which we are subject in the given instance, and every solution begins with our alertness and concentration, which gently draw us into the chain of events and restore to our will its balancing counterweights..." ―from letter to Emanuel von Bodman Westerwede bei Bremen (August 17, 1901)”

LoveSufferingRainer Maria Rilke
Book:Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910
Create image

“There the tree rises. Oh pure surpassing! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh great tree of sound! And all is silent, And from this silence arise New beginnings, intimations, changings. From the stillness animals throng, out of the clear Snapping forest of lair and nest; And thus they are stealthy not from cunning Not from fear But to hear. And in their hearts the howling, the cry, The stag-call seem too little. And where before Was but the rudest shelter to receive these, A refuge fashioned out of darkest longing Entered, tremulo, the doorpost aquiver, - There You have fashioned them a temple for their hearing.”

LoveBeautyMusicOrpheus
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
Create image

“He can remind himself that all beauty in plants and animals is a quiet and durable form of love and longing, and he can see the animal, as also the plant, patiently and willingly joining and multiplying and growing, not from physical pleasure, not from physical suffering, but bowing to necessities which are greater than pleasure and pain and more powerful than desire and resistance. Oh if only mankind could embrace this mystery, which penetrates the earth right into its smallest elements, with more humility, and bear and sustain it with more gravity and know how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly.”

LoveNatureBeauty
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.”

Love
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. - Love Song”

LoveSoulPoetrySoul Mate
Book:Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose
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

“The art of creating is nothing without the vast ongoing participation and collaboration of the real world, nothing without the thousandfold harmonizing of things and beings; and the creator’s pleasure is thereby inexpressibly rich because it contains memories of the begetting and bearing of millions. In a single creative thought dwell a thousand forgotten nights of love, which infuse it with immensity. And those who come together in the night, locked in thrusting desire, are gathering nectar, generating power and sweetness for some future poetic utterance that will sing the rapture.”

LovePoetryCreationSolitude
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“It is true that many young people who wrongly, that is, simply with abandon and unsolitarily, feel the oppressiveness of a failure and want to make the situation in which they have landed viable and fruitful in their own personal way—; for their nature tells them that, less even than all else that is important, can questions of love be solved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case demand a new, special, only personal answer—: but how should they, who have already flung themselves together and no longer mark off and distinguish themselves from each other, who therefore no longer possess anything of their own selves, be able to find a way out of themselves, out of the depth of their already shattered solitude?”

LoveSolitudeIndependent Thinking
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“Put out my eyes: and I shall see you, too, seal up my ears: and I shall hear you still, and without feet I yet can go to you, and with no mouth, adjure you and I will. Break off my arms, and I shall hold you fast even with my heart, as though it were a hand; arrest my heart, my brain to throb is sworn, and if into my brain you fling a brand, yet on my very blood you will be borne.”

LovePoetryPoemMemorySenses
Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Create image

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn.”

LoveDifficultYouthIncapableTask
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
Create image

“A complete sharing between two people is an impossibility and whenever it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a mutual agreement which robs either one member or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”

LoveMarriage
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

“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. Dear girl, this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but seething multitudes; not just a single child, but also the fathers lying in our depths like fallen mountains; also the dried-up riverbeds of ancient mothers-;also the whole soundless landscape under the clouded or clear sky of its destiny -; all this, my dear, preceded you.”

LoveYearsChildrenWholeLyingMotherGirlFatherDestinyClearSkyFlowerArmsMountainFlowDepthDearAncientAccomplishLandscapeFallenSomedayMultitudesOur LoveSapCloudedSeethingClear SkiesSingle Child
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image