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Rainer Maria Rilke

14 quotes

Not every great thinker makes it into the history books, but Rainer Maria Rilke's words speak for themselves. Whether reflecting on Love or Work, Rainer Maria Rilke brought uncommon clarity to every subject. Browse 18 quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke that cover ground from Love, Work, Experience, Art, and Time. Readers often gravitate to this one: "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, 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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love

All Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

“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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Relationship

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Experience

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Nature

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love

“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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Alone

“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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Work

“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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Art

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Future

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Fear

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

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Art

“More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Marriage

“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.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love