Skip to main content

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Image
By on


 "If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. If you will love what seems to be insignificant and will in an unassuming manner, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier, more harmonious, and somehow more conciliatory, not for your intellect - that will most likely remain behind, astonished - but for your innermost consciousness, your awakeness, and your inner knowing."

"dear friend, embrace your solitude and love it."

"Your innermost happening is worth all your love."

"Do not expend too much courage or time to clarify your position to others."

"We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance."

"To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely preparation. For that reason young people -  who are beginners in everything - cannot yet love; they do not know how to love. They must learn it. With their whole being, with all strengths enveloping their lonely, disquieted heart, they must learn to love - even while their heartbeat is quickening."

"it is so important to be alone and observant when one is sad."

"It is always my wish that you might find enough patience within yourself to endure, and enough innocence to have faith. It is my wish that you might gain more and more trust in whatever is difficult for you, in your aloneness, among other things. Allow life to happen to you. Believe me, life is right in all cases."

My Favourite Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 2026—some reading on Manipur

By on
 End of September already.  I have been reading books by foreign authors about the outside world. Fiction and Non-fiction. Imaginations of people from far-away lands. Happenings of distant places. I do learn a lot and enjoy reading them. But I know almost nothing about my own place. It feels hollow. I gotta fix that, don't I?  I went to this library, which recently organised an exhibition and brought home some books about Manipur. Surprisingly, I was absorbed in the reading. Some of the essays were really interesting. And I got to learn more about my place. That's good.  Some notes: People of Manipur have been living in the midst of a conflict zone for the last five to six decades. People outside might know of the conflict that erupted in May 2023. That's not the only one. Oh no. "In contemporary Manipur we witness a three-way contest of the so-called territory of Manipur, the concept of United Manipur as opposed to the idea of fragmenting the age-old state's bound...
Post a Comment
Read more

June 2026—Margaret Atwood, Matt Haig and More

By on
"By the time they have read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it, they are dead." Quote from "The Humans" by Matt Haig. I guess, no time to lose. Keep reading. I may be able to make it. Also, no need to keep reading books if I don't enjoy them. This month, I didn't finish most of the books I started. 1. Speaking with Nature by Ramachandra Guha I wish more people cared about the environment, climate change, wildlife conservation, and animal rights, along with human rights. Lately, I have started picking up books on such topics. Speaking with Nature is about the origins of Indian environmentalism.   "The high living standards of one part of the world were in part enabled by its control of other parts of the world. Imperialism, the domination of one country or people over another, was therefore not just immoral, but also, in an environmental and ecological sense, unsustainable." Reading this was going ...
Post a Comment
Read more

July 2026—Margaret Atwood, Dr. Seuss and More

By on
I finished the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood. Book 1 in June and Books 2 &3 in July. Also read 3 other books- two of which were very short. I could read only a little in the first 3 weeks this month. Then things came up. 1. The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood Book 2 in the trilogy.  "...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there’s nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing." Humans cause so much suffering on Earth. Ever wonder how the world will be without them? This trilogy offers a peek into that world. The flood in the title is the flood that wipes out the human species, minus the vegans.  2. MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood Book 3 in the trilogy.  Out of the 3, I like the first one. The rest are okay. But overall, I enjoyed the trilogy. 3. Justice for Animals, Martha C. Nussbaum "all animals, both human and non-human, live on this fragile planet, on which we depend for everything that matters. We didn’t choose to be here. We found...
Post a Comment
Read more