Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

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

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.

Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.

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.

God... sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it... and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.

I am like a child who awakes At the light, so safe and secureFree from night's fears when dawn breaks, In Thee I am ever secure.

And when suddenly the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry, uttered the words: 'He has turned round' – she comprehended nothing and said softly: 'Who?

There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.

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

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.

Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive.

It was not in me It came and wentI wanted to hold it It was held by wine(I no longer know what it was)

That is longing: To dwell in the flux of things, To have no home in the present. And these are wishes: gentle dialogues Of the poor hours with eternity.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final

If the Angel deigns to appear, it will be because you have convinced him, not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning — to be a Beginner!

Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.

Most people have turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it.

I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

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

Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain?