He was a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and difficult significance of his tools. Therein lay a certain renunciation of Life, but in just this renunciation lay his triumph, for Life entered into his work.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Pleas don’t above all, plant me in your heart. I grow to quick.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

In the room... they are inside the books. They move sometimes within the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking for that reward which might come from without. For the creator must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself, and in Nature to which he has attached himself.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not lose too much time and too much courage in explaining.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence. For beauty’s nothing but the beginning of terror we’re still just able to bear.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Dance the orange.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Art means to be oblivious to the fact that the world already exists and to create one.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

If you hold close to nature, to what is simple in it, to the small things people hardly see and which all of a sudden can become great and immeasurable; if you have this love for what is slight, and quite unassumingly, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor – then everything will grow easier, more unified and somehow more conciliatory, not perhaps in the intellect, which, amazed, remains a step behind, but in your deepest consciousness, watchfulness and knowledge.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

It is good to hear all of this and to see it and to seize it, not to become numb toward it but on the contrary: everything is to be felt in countless ways in all its variations yet without losing ourselves to it.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Basically, if it is good, one can’t live to see it recognized: otherwise it’s just half good and not reckless enough...

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves...

— Rainer Maria Rilke

There is no more wretched prison than the fear of hurting someone who loves you.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

I am able more and more to make use of that long patience you have taught me by your tenacious example; that patience which, disproportionate to ordinary life which seems to bid us haste, puts us in touch with all that surpasses us.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Beauty is but the beginning of terror. We can barely endure it and are awed when it declines to destroy us.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Solitude is not merely a matter of being alone: it is a territory to be entered and occupied.

— Rainer Maria Rilke
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