Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·173 of 348
"Live the questions now."
They never said that.
What people say
"Live the questions now."
What was actually said
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now." Rainer Maria Rilke — Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4 (16 July 1903)
Why it stuck
The aphorism is the final sentence of a long passage of tenderness and instruction. Isolated, it sounds like journaling advice. In the letter, it is the answer to someone who wrote Rilke in despair.
The Norton Criterion edition retains the full passage; most internet reprints do not.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.