"It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it."
Rainer Maria Rilke
Poet, Novelist
Rainer Maria Rilke was a German poet known for his profound exploration of love, existence, and the human condition, particularly in works like 'The Duino Elegies.'
- Born
- September 4, 1875
- Died
- December 29, 1926
- Quotes
- 487
- Rank
- #71
Quote collection
Rainer Maria Rilke quotes (page 11 of 25)
487 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us."
"Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside"
"The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. I feel closer to what language can't reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven... in the ponds broken off from the sky. . ."
"In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exaltation."
"What keeps you from... living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy?"
"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."
"Be patient with all that is unsolved in your life. Learn to love the questions themselves, until some distant day, without your knowing, you will have lived into the answers."
"So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety - like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in the palm of its hand and will not let you fall."
"I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"
"Everything terrible is something that needs our love."
"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."
"We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know."
"Trees do not force their sap, nor does the flower push its bloom."
"We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash."
"the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance."
"Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation. You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold, comes at long last over everyone."
"They, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time."
"Love and death are the great gifts that are given to us; mostly they are passed on unopened."
"Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing."