“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpected…" by Rainer Maria Rilke?

Rainer Maria Rilke176

Austrian poet and writer 1875–1926

Related quotes

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Right Thing," ll. 7-9
The Far Field (1964)
Context: God bless the roots! — Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

“Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

“One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

"Of fire"
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

“Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Statements after the Solvay Conference of 1927, as quoted in Physics and Beyond (1971) http://www.edge.org/conversation/science-and-religion by Werner Heisenberg <br class="br">Context: At the dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particular community fitted into a spiritual framework, based largely on religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework itself had to be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community, even if its parables and images conveyed no more than the vaguest hint as to their underlying values and ideas. But if he himself is to live by these values, the average man has to be convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the entire wisdom of his society. For "believing" does not to him mean "taking for granted," but rather "trusting in the guidance" of accepted values. That is why society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old spiritual forms. The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best be an emergency measure, afford some temporary relief. In western culture, for instance, we may well reach the point in the not too distant future where the parables and images of the old religions will have lost their persuasive force even for the average person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics will collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors will be perpetrated. In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise.<br>Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point.