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.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.