I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I wa…

Rainer Maria Rilke
343 citations
I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
Time
8

More Author Quotes

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.
You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank … ▶
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. ✨ Rainer Maria Rilke (2002). Letters on Céza … ▶
But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. … ▶
Some day when I lose you, will you still be able to sleep, without me to whisper over you like a crown of linden branches? ✨ Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). New Poems: A Revised Bilingual Edition, p.289, … ▶

More Author Quotes

Most Cited Authors

The Best Quotes

Most Liked Authors

Curated Author Quotes