But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace will sometimes fall into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing?

— Rainer Maria Rilke

But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. ---And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it, you will find all your paths.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way--and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Death is our friend, precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Do continue to believe that with your feeling and your work you are taking part in the greatest the more strongly you cultivate in yourself this belief the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise, it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow.

— Rainer Maria Rilke