100 Enlightening Quotes By Rainer Maria Rilke, The Author Of Letters To A Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist who is widely known as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poet. Rilke’s writing was unique in context that it helped expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery. What gave Rilke an edge over other writers of his generation was his use of physical symbols instead of intellectual ones. Unlike Shakespeare who thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thought of the human in terms of the non-human. In his life, Rilke developed his own philosophy that rejected the Catholic beliefs and Christianity and instead reconciled beauty and suffering, life and death, into one philosophy. He did not believe that Christ was divine and instead argued Him to be entirely human. Over the years, Rilke’s work found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and through frequent quoting in television programs, books and motion pictures. Other than his poetic verses and prose, Rilke’s line of belief and thought can also be visible in his quotes that touch wide variety of aspects of life. Browse through this section and find some of the best known quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke.
We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.
And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
The only journey is the one within.
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
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.
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant...
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.
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow
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.
Think... of the world you carry within you.
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
Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.
May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.
That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.
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.
