Name: The Poet's Guide to Life
ISBN: 9780679642923

Rainer Maria Rilke

Presents a selection of observations and reflections on the topics of illness and death, dreams and religion, language and art, love and happiness, work and ambition, and childhood and old age.

The Wisdom of Rilke

The Poet's Guide to Life

maia

Wishes are the memories coming from our future! 

Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you.

I have by now grown accustomed, to the degree that this is humanly possible, to grasp everything that we may encounter according to its particular intensity without worrying much about how long it will last. Ultimately, this may be the best and most direct way of expecting the utmost of everything—even its duration.

Is not everything that happens to us, whether or not we desire or solicitit, always glorious and full of the purest, clearest justice?

What else does it mean to live but precisely this daring undertaking of filling a mold that one day will be broken off one's new shoulders, so that, now free in this new metamorphosis, one may become acquainted with all the other beings that have been magically transported into the same realm?

Finally—we know this—life's little wisdom is to wait (but to wait in the proper, pure state of mind), and the great grace that is bestowed on us in return is to survive...

Is it not peculiar that nearly all of the great philosophers and psychologists have always paid attention to the earth and nothing but the earth? great Would it not be more sublime to lift our eyes from this crumb, and instead of considering a Our attention to space itself? Just imagine how small speck of dust in the universe, to turn and insignificant all earthly toils would suddenly appear at the moment when our earth would shrink to the tiniest, swirling, aimless particle of an infinite world! And how the human being would have to grow in size on his "small earth"!

I confess that I consider life to be a thing of the most untouchable deliciousness, and that even the confluence of so many disasters and deprivations, the exposure of countless fates, everything that insurmountably increased for us over the past few years to become a still rising terror cannot distract me from the fullness and goodness of existence that is inclined toward us. There would be little sense in approaching you with good wishes if each wish were not preceded by this conviction that the goods of life arise pure, undamaged, and, at their very bottom, desirable out of upheaval and ruin.

There is a single, deadly mnistake that we can make: to attach ourselves to another human being even if only for an instant.

Ultimately nobody can help anyone else in life; one has this recurring experience in every conflict and confusion: that one is alone.

Whatever is heavy and difficult, as long as it is only borne properly, also marks the precise weight of life. It teaches us the measure by which we may know our strength and which we may then also apply when we feel blessed with happiness.

Words . . . could they be words of words consolation? I am not sure about that, and I don't quite believe that one could console oneself over a loss as sudden and great as the one you just experienced. Even time does not "console," as people say superficially; at best it puts things in their place and creates order-and even that only because we so quickly begin to regard this order casually and consider it so little, this order to which tme contributes so quietly by finding the proper place for, appeasing, and reconciling everything within the great Whole. 

Joy is inexpressibly more than happiness. Happiness befalls people, happiness is fate, while people themselves. Joy is plainly a good season for the heart; joy is the ultimate achievement of which human beings are capable. cause joy to bloom inside

i thought i needed to read some excerpts and collections of words from my favourite poet especially about life as a whole. he mentioned every aspect of living in this collection and i have to say that it helped me in every way, considering that i have been in the shadows of melancholy. once again, rilke's works have been a saviour to my life and he remains to be one of my favourite poets of all time.

The Poet's Guide to Life The Wisdom of Rilke