Rainer Maria Rilke

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.

The only journey is the one within.

Wishes are memories coming from our future!

Truly to sing, that is a different breath.

To be in circumstances that are working upon us that from time to time place us in front of great natural Things that is all we need.

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

It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it.

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the strangest, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

Just keep going - no feeling is final.

More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.

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.

I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

If your daily life seems poor do not blame it blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches for the Creator there is no poverty.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

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.

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

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

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

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

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

Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.

Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this that man and maid freed of all false feelings and reluctances will seek each other not as opposites but as brother and sister as neighbors and will come together as human beings.

A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

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

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.

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

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

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

A carefree letting go of oneself not a caution but a wise blindness.

Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing it must become criticism.

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

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

Young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

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

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

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

All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

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

Shattered people are best represented by bits and pieces.

We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily–we do not need to learn it.

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

Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love...

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

Everything terrible is something that needs our love.

Be patient with all that is unresolved within your heart, and try to love the questions.

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.

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

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

Those doves below the ones utterly cared for never endangered ones cannot know tenderness.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

The only journey is the journey within.

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

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.

It is good to be alone for solitude is difficult that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.

It seems to me that the only way one can be helpful is to extend ones hand to someone else involuntarily and without ever knowing how useful this will be.

Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's curtain?