A Quote by Rainer Maria Rilke

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Quote Topics

Bottom Courage Demanded Encounter Have Courage Inexplicable May Most Only Singular Strange Us

Quote Author

Rainer Maria Rilke
German - Novelist
December 4, 1875 - December 29, 1926

We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard - of, must be possible in it. This is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most inexplicable.

Rainer Maria Rilke

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.

Bertrand Russell

The quality that defines us as Americans is the courage to respond to being hit. The courage to root out and destroy the killers. And, most importantly, the courage to hold on to our values and protect our hard-won freedoms while doing it.

Nick Clooney

Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.

Robert Frost

Most acts of assent require far more courage than most acts of protest, since courage is clearly a readiness to risk self-humiliation.

Nigel Dennis

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

Delmore Schwartz

Real courage is not to give up hope, even in the most terrible darkness, and to carry on. That if courage and love is deep as despair, deeper, then light may come again

David Clement-Davies

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.

Cornel West

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.

Maya Angelou

The most important thing is, Do you have the courage to admit that you're wrong? And do you change? The most important thing to me as a CEO is that we keep the courage.

Tim Cook

Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it.

Ted Malloch

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.