Quotes From Rilke's Poetry

Here are the top 99 quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke’s work, as featured in the film Jojo Rabbit:

1. “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” – from “Go to the Limits of Your Longing”
2. “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.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
3. “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
4. “I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy.” – from “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”
5. “The only journey is the one within.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
6. “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
7. “Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
8. “You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens.” – from “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”
9. “The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
10. “And yet, though we strain against the deadening grip of daily necessity, I sense there is this mystery: All life is being lived.” – from “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”
11. “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” – from “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”
12. “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” – from “The Book of Hours”
13. “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” – from “The Book of Hours”
14. “You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken.” – from “The Book of Hours”
15. “Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” – from “The Book of Hours”
16. “Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
17. “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.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
18. “It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
19. “I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.” – from “The Book of Hours”
20. “The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” – from “The Book of Hours”
21. “The most important thing in life is to hold fast to the sacred bond of love and let it be a source of energy that will sustain you.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
22. “I am too alone in the world, yet not alone enough to make every moment holy. I am too tiny in this world, yet not tiny enough to be just a thing in it. I am too much a contradiction in myself, yet not enough to escape from being myself.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
23. “He who has patience finds what he seeks.” – from “The Book of Hours”
24. “The only true journey is through the self.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
25. “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
26. “I am not one of those who neglect the dying light, but neither am I one of those who see merely the light that dies. I am something else entirely.” – from “The Book of Hours”
27. “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
28. “What is to be done? Anything. Something. So long as you just don’t sit there. Don’t be content with doing things you are able to do – do things that are difficult.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
29. “The only way forward is through love.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
30. “The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
31. “I am the rest between two notes, which are somehow always in discord because Death’s note wants to climb over—but in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling.” – from “The Book of Hours”
32. “We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
33. “The more one is, the richer is all that one experiences. And whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
34. “I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
35. “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
36. “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” – from “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”
37. “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” – from “The Book of Hours”
38. “You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken.” – from “The Book of Hours”
39. “Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” – from “The Book of Hours”
40. “Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
41. “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.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
42. “It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.” – from “Letters to a Young Poet”
43. “I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old