Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke—better known as Rainer Maria Rilke—was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical". His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief,...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 December 1875
CountryGermany
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult
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
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.
Those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious.
Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.
There are quantities of human faces, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.
and I circle ten thousand years long; And I still don't know if I'm a falcon, a storm, or an unfinished song
No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.
One must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises.
I'm so glad you're here. . .it helps me realize how beautiful my world is.
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.
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.
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.
Who if I cried out, would hear me among the angel's hierarchies?and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:I would be consumed in that overwhelming existenceFor beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure.and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.