Authors:

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Aliens Art Change Childhood Children Country Courage Creativity Criticism Darkness Desire Destiny Difficulty Doubt Dying Earth Eternity Faith Falling In Love Fame Fate Fear Feelings Future Giving God Greatness Grief Growth Healing Heart Home House Inspirational Inspiring Joy Letting Go Life Loneliness Love Lying Marriage Memories Morning Mountain Nature Pain Painting Past Patience Preparation Purpose Reading Reality Sadness Silence Simplicity Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Struggle Success Summer Terror Vision Waiting Walking Water Wine Winning Winter Writing
Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Art, Clever, Mean
"Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Three (April 23, 1903), 1929.

It almost seems as if autumn were the true creator, more creative than the spring, which is too even-toned, more creative when it comes with its will-to-change and shatters the much too ready-made, self-satisfied and really almost bourgeois-complacent image of summer.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Summer, Spring, Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke (1946). “Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1902-1926”

That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Dream, Mood, Intention
Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.85, W. W. Norton & Company

No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write, find out wether it spreading out its root in the deepest places of your heart...Delve into yourself for a deep answer

Rainer Maria Rilke
Writing, Heart, Roots

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Autumn, Sea, Smell

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Grief, Suffering, Sorrow
Rainer Maria Rilke (2015). “Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke”, p.632, Modern Library

Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are.

Rainer Maria Rilke
God, Hope, Thinking

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Spring, Advice, Depth
Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.9, New World Library

More unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Art, Mysterious, Existence
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

We are the bees of the invisible. We madly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Honey, Golden, Bees

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Sadness, Order, Break Out
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only in infinity.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Infinity, Beloved, Sooner Or Later
Rainer Maria Rilke (2007). “Letters on Life: New Prose Translations”, p.152, Modern Library

A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Art, Judging, Creative
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Solitude, Able, Hours

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Art, Criticism, Littles
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]

Rainer Maria Rilke
Song, Circles, Years
Rainer Maria Rilke (1996). “Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Solitude, Ends, Needed
Rainer Maria Rilke (2012). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.27, Courier Corporation

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Being Alone, Solitude, Reason
"Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Seven (May 14, 1904), 1929.

Truly it is glorious, our being here.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Life, Glorious

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Thinking, Blood, Childhood
"Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Nine (November 04, 1904), 1929.

So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Cities, People, Dies

Everyone once, once only. Just once and no more. And we also once. Never again. But this having been once, although only once, to have been of the earth, seems irrevocable.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Earth, Irrevocable, Has Beens
Rainer Maria Rilke (1961). “Duino Elegies, Bilingual Edition”, p.67, Univ of California Press

Whoever you are, go out into the evening, leaving your room, of which you know every bit; your house is the last before the infinite, whoever you are.

Rainer Maria Rilke
House, Leaving, Lasts
Rainer Maria Rilke (1941). “Fifty Selected Poems with English Translations”

To be an artist means not to compute or count.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Mean, Artist
Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.26, New World Library

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Heart, Angel, Would Be
Duino Elegies no. 1 (written 1912) (translation by Stephen Mitchell)

You May Also Like: