Letters to a Young Poet
In a 1903 letter to his protégé, the 19-year-old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus, Rilke writes:
I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now... See more
Maria Popova • Live the Questions: Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Doubt as a Stabilizing Force
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; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
Rainer Maria Rilke • Letters to a Young Poet
“I ask you, dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language. Don’t try to find the answers now. They cannot be given anyway, because you would not be able to live them. For everything is to be lived. Live the questions now. ... See more
On Being • Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’ve got inside you.’ | The On Being Project
J’étale les livres, par terre, sur une serviette avant de choisir ces Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke que je n’avais pas revues depuis un moment. Il y a des livres qu’il faut avoir lu à dix-sept ans pour bien les goûter, par exemple Bonjour tristesse de Sagan, Adolphe de Benjamin Constant, les romans d’Hermann Hesse ou ce mince recue
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