Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

. . . denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben andern. (... for there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.)

The creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

You must think that something is happening upon you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.

Live the questions now.

Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of a grandeur not fit for us.

Life is cut to allow for growth ... one may vigorously put on weight before one fills it out entirely.

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.

Success which is something so simple in the end is made up of thousands of things we never fully know what.

Life is heavier than the weight of all things.

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.

But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is-solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

You must change your life.

There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.

The only journey is the one within.

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.

Truly it is glorious, our being here.

More unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

You are nearing the land that is life; you will recognize it by its seriousness.

Do you remember how life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing?" I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one.

She followed slowly, taking a long time, As though there were some obstacles in the way; And yet: as though, once it was overcome, She would be beyond all walking, and would fly.