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

Who shows a child, just as they are? Who sets ITIN its constellation, and gives the measure of distance into its hand? Who makes a child’s death out of gray bread, that hardens, - or leaves it inside its round mouth like the core of a shining apple? Killers areas to grasp. But this: death, the whole of death, before life, to hold it so softly, and not live in anger, cannot be expressed.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain?

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Why don't you think of [God] as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity... the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are?

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions, and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Wishes are memories coming from our future!

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

— Rainer Maria Rilke