Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

solitude love relationship

About Rainer Maria Rilke

Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars...

More quotations from Rainer Maria Rilke

Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain? It lifts, and the scenery is falling apart.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

heart scenery cohesion

If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

fear angels devils flight

No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

risk danger art

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

connection nature home

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

life patience questions ignorance

More quotations tagged with “relationship”

All my life I have been reading romance novels. Those stupid books ruined me. I've always wanted that fire that every book I ever read talks about.

—Aurora Rose Reynolds in Until Trevor

love reading relationship books romance

I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love optimism relationship risk romance greatness men

I think I can live without you, but it won't be any kind of life.

—Rainbow Rowell in Landline

love living relationship desire want

When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You might grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume that it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for granted, which might be the very thing so dear about it.

—Emily Giffin in Something Borrowed

love relationship forever

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

—Pema Chödrön

humanity presence relationship compassion equality darkness healer wounded similarity

History

15 Feb 2015 Added