I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

solitude alone spirituality

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

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.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Nights of anguish. Inconsolable sisters, why did I not kneel more to greet you, lose myself more in your loosened hair?

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

More quotations tagged with “spirituality”

Monetary donations to a spiritual cause, contributions of physical labor, involvement with a particular guru, none of these necessarily mean that we have actually committed ourselves to openness. More likely these kinds of commitments are simply ways of proving that we have joined the side of "right.

—Chögyam Trungpa

spirituality religion right commitment openness

There can be no spirituality, no sanctity, no truth without the female sex.

—Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

truth spirituality men and women

Art is spirituality in drag.

—Jennifer Yane

spirituality art

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.

—Mahatma Gandhi

spirituality fear cowardice morality fearlessness

The spiritual life does not remove us from the world, but leads us deeper into it.

—Henri J. M. Nouwen

spirituality life depth