“All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Nine (4 November 1904)

About Rainer Maria Rilke

1875 – 1926

Austro-Bohemian poet, best known for 'Letters to a Young Poet' (written 1903–1908, published 1929) and 'Duino Elegies'.

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves.”

“A good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.”

“I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”