Quotes About Spirituality

Rainer Maria Rilke

This, a world seen no longer from the human point of view, but inside the angel, is perhaps my real task.

Sometimes a man rises from the supper table and goes outside. And he keeps on going because somewhere to the east there's a church.

Schließlich wollte ich Ihnen ja auch nur raten, still und ernst durch Ihre Entwicklung durchzuwachsen; Sie können sie gar nicht heftiger stören, als wenn Sie nach außen sehen und von außen Antwort erwarten auf Fragen, die nur Ihr innerstes Gefühl in Ihrer leisteten Stunde vielleicht beantworten kann.

But the living are wrong in the sharp distinctions they make. Angels, it seems, don't always know if they're moving among the living or the dead.

Dann brachte mir dein Brief den sanften Segen, ich wußte, daß es keine Ferne gibt: Aus allem Schönen gehst du mir entgegen, mein Frühlingswind du, du mein Sommerregen, du meine Juninacht mit tausend Wegen, auf denen kein Geweihter schritt vor mir: ich bin in dir!

You are looking outward, which, now above all, you should not do. No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself.

Something in Mama's voice was vast and high, like a rainbow; yet something sad and deep, like when the organ played in church, was around Mama's words.

What is wrong with this gentleman, Sylvester?' the tall one said. 'A man's dying outside!' I said. 'Someone is always dying,' the other one said. 'Yes, and it's good to die beneath God's great tent of sky.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of God.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.

Never lose an opportunity for seeing something beautiful for beauty is God s handwriting.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

A man is a god in ruins.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.

God offers to every mind a choice between repose and truth. take which you please--you can never have both. [Essay on Intellect]

Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits.

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.