Rainer Maria Rilke

Austro-German poet

Nationality: German

Type: Poet

Birth: 1875-1926

Page: 1

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

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Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

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Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old

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The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.

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We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

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Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

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We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

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There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

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In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

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I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

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We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

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For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

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We boil at different degrees.

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A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

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Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

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Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived.

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To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

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Beauty rests on necessities.

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The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

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A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

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As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

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Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

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We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

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Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

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All the great ages have been ages of belief.

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We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

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Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

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Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

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Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

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People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

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Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

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Judge of your natural character by what you do in dreams.

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Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

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Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

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That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

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No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

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A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

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People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

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Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

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Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

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Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

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So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.

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There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

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Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

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We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

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Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

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The city is recruited from the country.

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Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

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As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, whi

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Civilization depends on morality.

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Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

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The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still converti

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Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

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Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

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When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.

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There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels,

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Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, ''If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

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We are the prisoners of ideas.

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We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves...

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One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the o

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A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

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All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

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Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused

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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

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Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

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As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

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Nothing external to you has any power over you.

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Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

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In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

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Things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

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Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage.

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What a new face courage puts on everything!

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Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it

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Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.

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Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

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A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

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When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

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We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

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Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

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Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

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That which builds is better than that which is built.

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Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

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Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

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Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

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Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

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Blame is safer than praise.

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Culture is one thing and varnish is another.

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Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

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One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

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The most dangerous thing is illusion.

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As soon as there is life there is danger.

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The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

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It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

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Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

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Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

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There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

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Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

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Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

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When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

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There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.

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Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

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Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?

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There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, ''Anywhere but here.''

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Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

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Commerce is a game of skill which everyone cannot play and few can play well.

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Knowledge exists to be imparted.

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The years teach us much the days never knew.

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The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

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No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

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The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

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I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.

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In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

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Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

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We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

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There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

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The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption -pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

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The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

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An empire is an immense egotism.

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Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.

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Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.

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Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

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Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

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Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

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The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

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There is always a best way of doing everything.

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How much of human life is lost in waiting.

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The more experiments you make the better.

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Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

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I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

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The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

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The eye is easily frightened.

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If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

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No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

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Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

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The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

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Our faith comes in moments... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.

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The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

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All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

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Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

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Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

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Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.

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Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

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Always do what you are afraid to do.

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Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

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Fear always springs from ignorance.

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Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

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Earth laughs in flowers.

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Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

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I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

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Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

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Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or

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So far as a person thinks; they are free.

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For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

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It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

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A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

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A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

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Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

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A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

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I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

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A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

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I didn't find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

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He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

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We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

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The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

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The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

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Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

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The only way to have a friend is to be one.

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Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

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It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

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When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

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To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius.

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Accept your genius and say what you think.

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The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

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Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

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In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

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The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

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Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

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A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

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It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

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The less government we have the better.

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The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters wh

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I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new.

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The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

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The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

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He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

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Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.

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No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

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A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

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To be great is to be misunderstood.

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Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

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The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

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Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

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To fill the hour - that is happiness.

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I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

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Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness - an open and noble temper.

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Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

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Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

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His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

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A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

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Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right.

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Every hero becomes a bore at last.

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The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic can

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Our best history is still poetry.

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It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

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Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

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The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

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We are always getting ready to live, but never living.