Skip to content
quotesby

There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rainer Maria Rilke#54

PhilosophyPsychologySolitudePatienceFaithSelf help

About this quote

What does it mean?
Rilke urges patience, simplicity, and faith to endure doubts and find confidence, while letting life unfold naturally.
In plain terms
Be patient, simple, and trust life to bring confidence.
What can you take from it?
Cultivate patience and faith to face inner conflict.

Where it applies

  • when doubting oneself
  • during personal crises

Putting it to work

  • daily meditation
  • journaling doubts

Questions to consider

  • How can you practice patience in moments of doubt?
  • What does ‘letting life happen’ mean to you?

Another view

Patience alone may not resolve deep psychological issues.

More from Rainer Maria Rilke

  1. If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most al…

    Permalink to quote #53
  2. All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everyth…

    Permalink to quote #55
  3. It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Becau…

    Permalink to quote #52

Related quotes

  1. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thin…

    William JamesWilliam James quote #39
  2. Fervent bella horrida, fervent ossibus inclusa fremit et discordibus armis non simplex natura hominis.

    PrudentiusPrudentius quote #1
  3. Nec speres aliquid nec extimescas, exarmaueris impotentis iram; at quisquis trepidus pauet uel optat, quod non sit stabilis suique iuris, abiecit clipeum locoq…

    Ancius BoethiusAncius Boethius quote #2