Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.

Success which is something so simple in the end is made up of thousands of things we never fully know what.

Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen.

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.... Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances... Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

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

A person isnt who they are during the last conversation you had with them - theyre who theyve been throughout your whole relationship.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

“For fame is ultimately but the summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name”

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

“Art too is just a way of living.”

“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 anothers sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

“Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of ones own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of ones own.”