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

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4 (1903)

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'.

“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.”

“A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”

“Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other, each is enriched by the other.”

“They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.”

“It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.”

“The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.”