Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

“...perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

“There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult”

“No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger”

“Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.”

“But everything that may some day be possible to many the solitary man can now prepare and build with his hands, that err less. Therefore, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them, which need not necessarily change as you yourself become different and again different; love in them life in an unfamiliar form and be considerate of aging people, who fear that being-alone in which you trust.”

“God...sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it... and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.”

“Many years ago when an adored dog died, a great friend, a bishop, said to me, You must always remember that, as far as the Bible is concerned, God only threw the humans out of Paradise”

“God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe hell be there”

“The only journey is the one within.”

“There are quantities of human faces, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.”

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.”

“It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.”

“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”

“If your everyday life seems poor, dont blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.”

“The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.”

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”

“It was only a sunny smile and little it cost in the giving but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”

“Were a long, long way from home. Homes a long, long way from us.”

“Perfection is boring. If a face doesnt have mistakes, its nothing.”