What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours-that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child. Rainer Maria Rilke More Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke More Quotes From Rainer Maria Rilke May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode. Rainer Maria Rilke dark heart years We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash. Rainer Maria Rilke trash mind Resolve to be always beginning-to be a beginner! Rainer Maria Rilke beginners resolve Whoever you are: in the evening step out of your room, where you know everything; yours is the last house before the far-off: whoever you are. With your eyes, which in their weariness barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, you lift very slowly one black tree and place it against the sky: slender, alone. And you have made the world. And it is huge and like a word which grows ripe in silence. And as your will seizes on its meaning, tenderly your eyes let it go. Rainer Maria Rilke silence eye sky If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Rainer Maria Rilke princess race courage Solitude is nothing that one can choose or retrain from. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. Rainer Maria Rilke solitary solitude ifs Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Rainer Maria Rilke criticism littles art I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough Rainer Maria Rilke this-world enough world The hero is strangely akin to those who die young. Rainer Maria Rilke die-young hero young I implore those who love me to love my solitude. Rainer Maria Rilke solitude Life is cut to allow for growth ... one may vigorously put on weight before one fills it out entirely. Rainer Maria Rilke growth cutting weight . . . 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.) Rainer Maria Rilke change doe life I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything! Rainer Maria Rilke grateful pain patience What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer. Rainer Maria Rilke waiting feelings advice Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Rainer Maria Rilke progress opinion development You must change your life. Rainer Maria Rilke changing-your-life Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom. Rainer Maria Rilke intoxication joy blood If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself. Rainer Maria Rilke unreal accomplish dying ...a carefree letting go of oneself, not a caution, but a wise blindness. Rainer Maria Rilke carefree wise letting-go Oh longing for places that were not Cherished enough in that fleeting hour How I long to make good from afar The forgotten gesture, the additional act. Rainer Maria Rilke gestures fleeting long
