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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes about Childhood

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Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Heart, Childhood, Looks
Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salomé (2008). “Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters”, p.303, W. W. Norton & Company

Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Greatness, Childhood, Doe

To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Mean, Childhood, Thousand
Rainer Maria Rilke (2007). “Letters on Life: New Prose Translations”, p.77, Modern Library

I prayed to rediscover my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be, and that growing older has served no purpose at all.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Childhood, Purpose, Growing
1910 DieAufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (translated by Stephen Mitchell inThe Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1989).

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.

Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing?" I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Childhood, Remember, Longing

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.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Sex, Childhood, Needs

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