Rainer Maria Rilke

Literature Austrian 1875 – 1926 255 quotes

Greatest lyric poet of the 20th century

Most quoted

"If you are a writer, you must be a writer. If you are a poet, you must be a poet. If you are a human being, you must be a human being. If you are a dog, you must be a dog. If you are a cat, you must be a cat. If you are a mouse, you must be a mouse. If you are a flea, you must be a flea. If you are a bacterium, you must be a bacterium. If you are a virus, you must be a virus. If you are a quark, you must be a quark. If you are a string, you must be a string. If you are a black hole, you must be a black hole. If you are a universe, you must be a universe. If you are nothing, you must be nothing. If you are everything, you must be everything."

— from Letters to a Young Poet

"And you, you who are so young, you must be patient with everything that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

— from Letters to a Young Poet

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and 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."

— from Letters to a Young Poet, 1903

All quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke (255)

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

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 frights us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

The only journey is the one within.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and 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.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

For one human being to love another human being: 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.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

And if your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

You are not too old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly awaits.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

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

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and is not content to stay where it has always been. I have an interior that I never knew. Everything goes thither now. Nothing has an outside to it anymore.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 1902

Ah, not to be cut off, not to be divided! To take the world within you like a bowl of water, to make it your own, to make it whole.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 1902

Love consists of this: two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

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

Book of Hours 1907

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.

Book of Hours 1907

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

Book of Hours 1907

The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you?

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to burn.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and woman, freed from all false feelings and hesitations, will seek each other not as opposites but as members of a family, and will unite as human beings, in order to serve together the great work of the future.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903