Explore Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.

Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

If the Angel deigns to appear, it will be because you have convinced him, not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning — to be a Beginner!

Most people have turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it.

Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and great each other.

Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Do not be bewildered by the surfaces: in the depths all becomes law.

Thus we live, forever taking leave.

I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.

Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame.

Never believe fate is more than the condensation of childhood.

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.

Be patient with all that is uncertain in your heart...do not search for answers, which will not be given: you will not be able to live them, and its importat to live everything.

I am so glad you are here. It helps me realize how beautiful my world is.

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everthing in me that is bewildered and confused.

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.

Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.

Our deepest fears are like dragons, guarding our deepest treasure.