Quote

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rainer Maria Rilke
Age: 51 †
Born: 1875
Born: December 4
Died: 1926
Died: December 29
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Praha
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
René Maria Cäsar Rilke
Rainer Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Li-erh-kʻo
Rainer Maria Rielke
René Rilke
Rainer Mariyah Rilḳeh
Rainŏ Maria Rilkʻe
Reiner Marie Rilke
Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Rene Rilke
Skip
Tremendous
Begin
Beginning
Violence
Simply
Anything
Able

More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

Image
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Look: the trees exist the houses we dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only we pass by it all, like a rush of air. And everything conspires to keep quiet about us, half out of shame perhaps, half out of some secret hope.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)-they are experiences.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
We are the bees of the invisible. We madly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
As the arrow endures the string, and in the gathering momentum becomes more than itself. Because to stay is to be nowhere.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
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.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
They, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
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
Image
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads Of her life, and weaves them gratefully Into a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall And clears it for a different celebration.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Do not be bewildered by the surfaces: in the depths all becomes law.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Fame is the sum of the misunderstanding that gathers about a new name.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
Live the questions now.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Image
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
Image
Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.
Rainer Maria Rilke