"...it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to
 become something in himself, to become world, to be-
 come world for himself and for another's sake; it is a
 great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses
 him out and calls him to vast things."
                                    -Ranier Marie Rilke

"If I don't manage to fly, someone else will.
 The spirit wants only that there be flying.
 And for who happens to do it,
 In that he has only a passing interest."
                                    -Ranier Marie Rilke

"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before
 it happens."
                                    -Ranier Marie Rilke

"Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it,
 you will live along some distant day into your answers." 
                                    -Rainer Maria Rilke 

"The bird is a creature that has a very special feeling of trust in the
 external world, as if she knew that she is one with its deepest mystery.
 That is why she sings in it as if she were singing within her own depths;
 that is why we so easily receive a birdcall into our own depths; we seem to be
 translating it without residue into our emotion; indeed, it can for a moment
 turn the whole world into inner space, because we feel that the bird does not
 distinguish between her heart and the world's." 
                                    -Rainer Maria Rilke 
                                     Letter to Lou Andreas-Salome
                                     February 20, 1914
                                     The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
                                     ed. & trans. by Stephen Mitchell
                                     (NY: Random House, 1982), p. 327 

"Not any self-control or self-limitation
 for the sake of specific ends,
 but rather a carefree letting go of oneself:
 not caution, but rather a wise blindness;
 not working to acquire silent,
 slowly increasing possessions, but rather
 a continuous squandering of all perishable values."
                                     -Ranier Maria Rilke
                                      "Uber Kunst"


"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his
 solitude. Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest
 human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side
 by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
 which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide
 sky." 
                                     -Rainer Maria Rilke. 


"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: 
 that each shall stand guard over the solitude of the other.  For,
 if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to
 recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the
 purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. 
 And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt
 periods of deep isolation."
                                     -Rainer Maria Rilke


"Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have
 us believe; most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no
 word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art,
 mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures."
                                    -Rainer Maria Rilke
                                     1903, Letters to a Young Poet

"Als das Kind noch Kind war, gab es diese Fragen: Warum bin ich mich,
 und warum nicht dich? Warum bin ich hier, und warum nicht dort?"
                                    -Rainer Maria Rilke 

"That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for
 the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may
 encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless
 harm; the experiences that are called 'visions,' the whole so-called 
 `spirit-world,' death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have
 by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we
 could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God."
                                    -Ranier Marie Rilke

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the
 questions themselves... like books that are written in a foreign language.
 Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would
 not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the
 questions now... Resolve to be always beginning - to be a beginner.
                                    -Rainer Maria Rilke
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