Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

One of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence.

Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything.

I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open.

Fame, that public destruction of one in process of becoming, into whose building-ground the mob breaks, displacing his stones.

I never read anything concerning my work. I feel that criticism is a letter to the public which the author, since it is not directed to him, does not have to open and read.

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings. You language where all language ends. You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.

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

That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.

I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.

most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name.

Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

Be, in this immensity of night, the magic force at your sense's crossroad.

Nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters.

I am too alone in the world and not alone enough to make every moment holy.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

Thus we live, forever taking leave.

Resolve to be always beginning-to be a beginner!

Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.

It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only in infinity.

A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.

To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.

The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.

I have patience for centuries in me and will live as though my time were very big.

The hero is strangely akin to those who die young.

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough

Whoever you are, go out into the evening, leaving your room, of which you know every bit; your house is the last before the infinite, whoever you are.

In the night, I wish to speak with the angel to find out if she recognizes my eyes, if she will ask me: do you see Eden? And I’ll reply: Eden burns.

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

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

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

My blood is alive with many voices telling me I am made of longing.

Life is heavier than the weight of all things.

Shattered people are best represented by bits and pieces.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.

He who does not at some time, with definite determination consent to the terribleness of life, or even exalt in it, never takes possession of the inexpressible fullness of the power of our existence.

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 know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.

Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.

Now I come to you full of future. And from habit we begin to live our past.

Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness.

Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.