Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

Works of Art are of an infinite loneliness.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.

My art is representational by choice....if the art of painting is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate.

There is time only to work slowly There is no time not to love

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

To work is to live without dying.

Beauty is only the start of bearable terror.

Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation.? You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold?, comes at long last over everyone.

The only journey is the journey within.

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.

May you gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people.

Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest the more strongly you cultivate this belief the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

Angels often do now know whether they walk among the dead or living.

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.

Never believe fate is more than the condensation of childhood.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Our deepest fears are like dragons, guarding our deepest treasure.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches

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

Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development.