Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born.

Wishes are recollections coming from the future.

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future lessens . . . . Superabundant existence wells in my heart.

Now I come to you full of future. And from habit we begin to live our past.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... 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 it, 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.

For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences. And whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.

These soft nights hold me like themselves aloft and I lie without a lover.

I'm so glad you're here. . .it helps me realize how beautiful my world is.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Only love is like an arrow to your heart; the more you try to take it out, the more pain and blood you get

Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

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