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
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.
Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches
You life will find its own paths... and that they be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
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.
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.
Truly it is glorious, our being here.
. . . 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.)
We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard - of, must be possible in it. This is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most inexplicable.
Life is heavier than the weight of all things.
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.
What keeps you from... living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy?
Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.