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Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

— Rainer Maria Rilke New Poems: The Other Part (1908)

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More quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.

Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them.

Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990)

I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.

Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rainer Maria Rilke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.