Genuine, and unusually easy to pin down: the sentence sits in the fourth of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, headed “Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16th, 1903.” The English wording is M. D. Herter Norton’s translation, published by W. W. Norton in 1934 — Rilke’s own German reads “Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.”
“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Four (Worpswede, near Bremen, 16 July 1903), translated by M. D. Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1934). Originally published as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1929). English translation still in copyright. · Verbatim: “And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
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In context
Evoking the world of Rainer Maria Rilke — Austrian poet and novelist. Theme: "Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
The fourth letter, from Worpswede
Work
Letters to a Young Poet
Letter
Letter Four — “Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16th, 1903”
Original
Briefe an einen jungen Dichter, Insel Verlag, Leipzig, 1929
Translation
M. D. Herter Norton (W. W. Norton & Company, 1934)
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. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Letter Four, 16 July 1903
M. D. Herter Norton’s translation. Rilke’s German, as printed on Wikiquote ↗: “Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.”
Wikiquote’s sourced Rilke page ↗ places the sentence in Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Four (16 July 1903), and prints Rilke’s German beside it. It carries no “Misattributed” or “Disputed” entry for this line.
The M. D. Herter Norton translation carries the wording verbatim; in a scanned Norton printing on the Internet Archive ↗ the fourth letter is headed “Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16th, 1903,” and the copyright page reads “Copyright 1934 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Renewed 1962 by M. D. Herter Norton. Revised edition copyright 1954 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.”
The Internet Archive’s catalogue record for the 1934 W. W. Norton first US edition ↗ lists M. D. Herter Norton (1892–1985) as translator and describes the book as a translation of Briefe an einen jungen Dichter.
Wikipedia ↗ records that the ten letters were written to Franz Xaver Kappus, a nineteen-year-old military cadet, and first published in German by Insel Verlag in Leipzig in 1929, three years after Rilke’s death.
Attribution and copyright are separate questions here. Rilke’s German original appeared in Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Insel Verlag, 1929) and is old enough to be public domain in the United States — but the English sentence people actually quote is a translation, and translations carry their own copyright. This wording is M. D. Herter Norton’s: “Copyright 1934 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Renewed 1962 by M. D. Herter Norton,” with a revised edition copyright of 1954. Quote it briefly with credit; do not treat it as free text.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What usually goes wrong
Nobody else wrote this line, and Quote Investigator has never had to litigate it. The errors here are of a different kind — not the wrong author, but the wrong sentence, and a missing name.
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WordingStephen Mitchell’s translation different translation
Wikiquote records a second English rendering of the identical German sentence, credited to Stephen Mitchell, which ends “Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer” — see the variant on Wikiquote ↗. Both translations are legitimate; a sentence that starts in one and finishes in the other is not.
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CreditThe translator, dropped missing attribution
The English words are M. D. Herter Norton’s, not Rilke’s. Rilke wrote “Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.” The Internet Archive’s record for the 1934 first US edition names Herter Norton as its translator ↗; the quotation almost never travels with her name attached.
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ContextRead as a poem wrong genre
It is prose from a private letter, not verse. The line comes from one of ten letters Rilke sent to Franz Xaver Kappus, a nineteen-year-old military cadet; Kappus assembled and published them in 1929, three years after Rilke’s death — Wikipedia on Letters to a Young Poet ↗.
✓Rilke really did write it — in German, from Worpswede, on 16 July 1903 — and the English sentence everyone quotes is M. D. Herter Norton’s translation, first published by W. W. Norton in 1934 ↗ and still in copyright.
Context
Why a cadet got this letter
Franz Xaver Kappus was nineteen, studying at a military academy, and unsure whether he should be a soldier or a poet. He sent his verses to Rilke, who was then only twenty-seven himself, and asked for a verdict. Rilke declined to give one — he told Kappus that no one outside him could judge, and that the useful work was inward. Ten letters followed. Kappus kept them, and published them in 1929, three years after Rilke’s death, as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter.
The fourth letter was written from Worpswede, an artists’ colony near Bremen, and it opens with Rilke saying he had left Paris about ten days earlier, ill and tired. That is the register the famous sentence belongs to: not a maxim issued from serenity, but advice from a young writer who was himself unwell and unsettled, telling an even younger one that the honest move is to stop demanding answers you are not yet able to inhabit.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
On the two English versions
Rilke wrote in German. Every English form of this sentence is a translator’s choice, and the two best-known choices diverge in exactly the clause people love most. Norton (1934) ends “live along some distant day into the answer.” Stephen Mitchell’s translation, which Wikiquote prints as a variant, ends “live your way into the answer.”
Both are faithful to eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein. Neither is more Rilke than the other. What is not defensible is a hybrid: a quotation is only accurate if it stays inside one translator’s sentence from beginning to end.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born in Prague in 1875 and dead in Switzerland at fifty-one, Rilke is the poet of Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge — a writer whose reputation rests on difficulty, not consolation. The lines everyone knows him for, though, come from ten letters he wrote to a stranger: Franz Xaver Kappus, a nineteen-year-old military cadet who sent him poems and asked whether they were any good. Rilke never answered that question, and answered a much larger one instead.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Four (1903)
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M. D. Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1934), Letter Four, “Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16th, 1903.” Originally published as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1929).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/live-the-questions-now-perhaps-you-will-then-gradually/