Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread.

Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

Life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass.

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams...

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit.

The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.

If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.

History says, 'Don't hope on this side of the grave.'

Nothing can be grievous that is but once

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

It's a mantra I've lived by for as long as I can remember. Nothing lasts for ever.

Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.

For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.

It is privilege of living to be acutely, agonizingly conscious of the moment that is always present and always passing.

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

Love that well which thou must leave ere long.

We are occupants. No one has any lasting purchase on life or on the planet.