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)

A billion stars go spinning through the galaxy. But you matter.

Sonnets to Orpheus 1922

The work of the eyes is done. Now go and do heart-work.

Sonnets to Orpheus 1922

I learn of you as much as you of me; so we learn each other.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen to you.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

The quieter we become, the more we can hear.

Aphorism

Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and complete belonging.

Letter 1926

On his last day, Rilke said: 'I am in God. God is in me.'

Deathbed words 1926

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

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now 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.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.

Letters to a Young Poet 1903

And if your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, rather, 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

Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner—what is it? if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.

Duino Elegies 1922

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the woods.

Letters on Cézanne

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

Book of Hours

Where something becomes a question, it is a sign that it is still alive.

Letters to a Young Poet

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 neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to serve humanity.

Letters to a Young Poet

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and is not content to remain where it has always been. I have an interior that I never knew of. Everything goes thither now. I have no longer any imagination, but only a presentiment.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 1903

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to burn with an unfading light, to make oil for the lamps of the gods.

Duino Elegies

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and giving birth.

Letters to a Young Poet

We are bees of the invisible. We are plundering the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

Duino Elegies 1922