Who shows a child his true world? Who sets him among the stars, and places in his hand the true measure of space? Death can do this, the hugeness of death, even before life has begun— to hold it gently and feel no resentment, that is enough. -Rilke

Surely our heart travels not only from the ghostly to the holy, but it makes a circle. And we know only half of it. -Rilke

Sexual pleasure is ours so we may learn its fullness and radiance. The problem is not our acceptance of it, but that this experience is so often misused and squandered. It is taken to enliven the dead places of our lives, to distract instead of heightening our awareness. -Rilke

I will yearn for no closer connections and accustom my heart to the farthest reaches of the stars. Better it live with the spine-chilling stars than with the pretense of some protection hovering near. -Rilke

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

For it is not only sluggishness that makes human relations so unspeakably monotonous, it is the aversion to any new, unforeseen experience we are not sure we can handle. -Rilke

As you unfold as an artist, just keep on, quietly and earnestly, growing through all that happens to you. You cannot disrupt this process more violently than by looking outside yourself for answers that may only be found by attending to your innermost feeling. -Rilke

Just give me a little more time! I want to love the things as no one has thought to love them, until they’re worthy of you and real. -Rilke

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly, and over and over again you said be. And what they have stammered ever since are fragments of your ancient name. -Rilke

How delicious it is to wake up in a place where no one in the world guesses where you are. Sometimes I have stopped spontaneously in towns along my way only to taste the delight that no living being can imagine me there. How much that added to the lightness of my soul! -Rilke

From infinite longings finite deeds arise… But in these dancing tears, what is often withheld can be found: our strength. -Rilke

Love the questions themselves. Don’t dig for answers that can’t be given you yet: you cannot live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer. -Rilke

Those who create are like you, God. They long for the eternal. Lovers also gather your inheritance. They are the poets of one brief hour. They kiss an expressionless mouth into a smile as if creating it anew, more beautiful. -Rilke

And if you are terrified that God does not exist, at this very moment we speak of him, what reason do you have, if he never existed, for missing him and seeking him as if he had been lost? -Rilke

The more patient, quiet, and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and unerringly a new revelation can enter us, and the more we can make it our own. Later on when it manifests in our response to another person—we will feel it as belonging to our innermost being. -Rilke

The next era has no right to judge anything if it lacks the ability to contemplate the past without hatred or envy. It is fortunate if something of the ancestors lives on in it and continues to be loved and protected; only then does the past become fruitful and effective. -Rilke

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; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. -Rilke

I opened myself too wide. I forgot there’s more outside than things and animals at ease with themselves, whose eyes reflect the wholeness of their lives. I forgot my habit of grasping every look that fell on me: looks, opinions, scrutiny. -Rilke

The lies we tell are like toys, easy to break. Like gardens where we play hide and seek, and, in our excitement, make a sound so people will know where to look. -Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself. I was song, and the refrain which is God is still roaring in my ears. Now I am still and plain: no more words. -Rilke