Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. 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.

A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.

First a childhood, limitless and without renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy. Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery, and collapse into temptation and loss. Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender, and thrusts upon others that which it suffered. Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner and conqueror, blow by blow. And then alone in cold, light, open space, yet still deep within the mature erected form, a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one... Then God leaps out from behind his hiding 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.

The only journey is the one within.

Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.

Liebende … [w]enn ihr einer dem andern euch an den Mund hebt und ansetzt –: Getränk an Getränk: o wie entgeht dann der Trinkende seltsam der Handlung.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn, wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören, und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehn, und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören. Brich mir die Arme ab,ich fasse dich mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand, halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen, und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand, so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen.

You are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
its own secret.

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.

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...

Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.

Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug, um jede Stunde zu weihen. Ich bin auf der Welt zu gering und doch nicht klein genug, um vor dir zu sein wie ein Ding, dunkel und klug. Ich will meinen Willen und will meinen Willen begleiten die Wege zur Tat; und will in stillen, irgendwie zörgernden Zeiten, wenn etwas naht, unter den Wissenden sein oder allein.

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.