And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Angels often do now know whether they walk among the dead or living.

— 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

Art is childhood.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Art too is just a way of living.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges. Wonders happen if we can succeeding passing through the harshest danger;but only in a bright and purely granted achievement can we realize the wonder. To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us;the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough. Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions... For the god wants to know himself in you.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

At first the solitude charmed me like a prelude, but so much music wounded me.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honey sweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn’t comprehend. Don’t ask for advice from them and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

— Rainer Maria Rilke