Letters to a Young Poet
gradually come, on some far-off day, to live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
Do not seek out the answers now, which cannot be given to you because it you cannot live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then, without noticing it, you will
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I want to ask you, as best I can, dear sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to have love for the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
only wanted to advise you also, to grow quietly and seriously throughout your development too; you cannot disturb it more violently than if you look to the outside and from the outside expect a response to questions that only your innermost feeling at your quietest hour can possibly answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
this: to go into yourself and to examine the depths from which your life springs; at its source you will find the answer to the question—whether you must create.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
A work of art is good if it has come to be from necessity.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
where the noise of other people passes far in the distance. And if from this turning inward, from this submersion into your own world, come verses, then you will not think to ask anyone if they are good verses.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
If your daily life seems poor to you, do not blame that: blame yourself. Tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor and unimportant place.