Authors:

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes - Page 3

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
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Life, Believe, Let Me
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Relationship, Sad Love, Family Love

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

Rainer Maria Rilke
Love, Marriage, Insperational
Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.297, W. W. Norton & Company

Our heart always transcends us.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Heart

You darkness, that I come from, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world.

Rainer Maria Rilke
I Love You More, Fire, Darkness
Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Stars, Night, Spinning
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Buddha In Glory”

Life is heavier than the weight of all things.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Weight, Life Is, All Things
Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.63, North Point Press

Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Beautiful, Uplifting, Dream
Rainer Maria Rilke (1969). “Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910”, p.181, W. W. Norton & Company

It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Believe, Simplicity, Solitude

I think of you often, dear, and with such concentrated wishes that it really must help you in some way.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Thinking, Wish, Way
Rainer Maria Rilke (2012). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.41, Courier Corporation

To love is good, too: love being difficult. 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. Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Philosophy, Love Is, Preparation
"Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Seven (May 14, 1904), 1929.

Nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Challenges, Matter

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Eye, Heart, Done
"'Wendung' ('Turning Point')". Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1993.

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Patience, Ego, Solitude
"Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations". Book edited by Sy Safransky, p. 42, 1990.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Song, Years, Storm
Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Friendship, Emo, Sadness

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Friendship, Relationship, Marriage
Letter to Paula Modersohn-Becker, 12 Feb. 1902, in Gesammelte Briefe (Collected Letters, 1904) vol. 1, p. 204

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Fall, Bird, Teach
Rainer Maria Rilke (2005). “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Moving, Future, Space

Since I've learned to be silent, everything has come so much closer to me.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Learning, Silence, I've Learned

It seems to me that the only way one can be helpful is to extend one's hand to someone else involuntarily, and without ever knowing how useful this will be.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Hands, Knowing, Way
Rainer Maria Rilke (2007). “Letters on Life: New Prose Translations”, p.50, Modern Library

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things

Rainer Maria Rilke
Misled, Surface
Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.38, New World Library

I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Beautiful, Worry, Anxiety
Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

you are not too old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out it's own secret

Rainer Maria Rilke
Inspirational, Life, Hoe
Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Home, Support, Solitude

You May Also Like: