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A Merging Of Two People Is An Impossibility, And Where It Seems To Exist, It Is A Hemming-in, A Mutual Consent That Robs One Party Or Both Parties Of Their Fullest Freedom And Development.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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A Merging Of Two

Rainer Maria Rilke

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A Merging Of Two People Is An Impossibility, And Where It Seems To Exist, It Is A Hemming-in, A Mutual Consent That Robs One Party Or Both Parties Of Their Fullest Freedom And Development.

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Be Ahead Of All Parting, As Though It Already Were Behind You, Like The Winter That Has Just Gone By. For Among These Winters There Is One So Endlessly Winter That Only By Wintering Through It Will Your Heart Survive.

We Are The Bees Of The Invisible. We Madly Gather The Honey Of The Visible To Store It In The Great Golden Hive Of The Invisible.

Avoid Providing Material For The Drama That Is Always Stretched Tight Between Parents And Children; It Uses Up Much Of The Children’s Strength And Wastes The Love Of The Elders, Which Acts And Warms Even If It Doesn’t Comprehend. Don’t Ask For Advice From Them And Don’t Expect Any Understanding; But Believe In A Love That Is Being Stored Up For You Like An Inheritance, And Have Faith That In This Love There Is Strength And Blessing So Large That You Can Travel As Far As You Wish Without Having To Step Outside It.

No One Can Advise Or Help You - No One. There Is Only One Thing You Should Do. Go Into Yourself. Search For The Reason That Bids You Write, Find Out Wether It Spreading Out Its Root In The Deepest Places Of Your Heart...delve Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

We Are Unutterably Alone Essentially, Especially In The Things Most Intimate And Most Important.

Just Keep Going - No Feeling Is Final.

And One Of The Things I Find Most Moving Is The Way People With Infirmities Manage To Embrace Life, And From The Cool Flowers By The Wayside Reach Conclusions About The Vast Splendour Of Its Great Gardens. They Can, If Their Souls' Strings Are Finely Tuned, Arrive With Much Less Effort At The Feeling Of Eternity; For Everything We Do, They May Dream. And Precisely Where Our Deeds End, Theirs Begin To Bear Fruit.

Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.

I Want To Love The Things As No One Has Thought To Love Them.

To Be In Circumstances That Are Working Upon Us, That From Time To Time Place Us In Front Of Great Natural Things - That Is All We Need.

I Hold This To Be The Highest Task Of A Bond Between Two People: That Each Shall Stand Guard Over The Solitude Of The Other. For, If It Lies In The Nature Of Indifference And Of The Crowd To Recognize No Solitude, Then Love And Friendship Are There For The Purpose Of Continually Providing The Opportunity For Solitude. And Only Those Are The True Sharings Which Rhythmically Interrupt Periods Of Deep Isolation.

If There Is Anything Unhealthy In Your Reactions, Just Bear In Mind That Sickness Is The Means By Which An Organism Frees Itself From What Is Alien; So One Must Simply Help It To Be Sick, To Have Its Whole Sickness And To Break Out With It, Since That Is The Way It Gets Better.

That Is Longing: To Dwell In The Flux Of Things, To Have No Home In The Present. And These Are Wishes: Gentle Dialogues Of The Poor Hours With Eternity.

I Am Touched By Your Beautiful Anxiety About Life.

My Life Is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour, In Which You See Me Hurrying. Much Stands Behind Me; I Stand Before It Like A Tree; I Am Only One Of My Many Mouths, And At That, The One That Will Be Still The Soonest. I Am The Rest Between Two Notes, Which Are Somehow Always In Discord Because Death’s Note Wants To Climb Over— But In The Dark Interval, Reconciled, They Stay There Trembling. And The Song Goes On, Beautiful.

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.

And I Circle Ten Thousand Years Long; And I Still Don't Know If I'm A Falcon, A Storm, Or An Unfinished Song

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness And With Nothing So Little To Be Reached As With Criticism.

As The Arrow Endures The String, And In The Gathering Momentum Becomes More Than Itself. Because To Stay Is To Be Nowhere.

All This Hurrying Soon Will Be Over. Only When We Tarry Do We Touch The Holy.

A Kind Of Memory That Tells Us That What We're Now Striving For Was Once Nearer And Truer And Attached To Us With Infinite Tenderness. Here All Is Distance, There It Was Breath. After The First Home The Second One Seems Draughty And Strangely Sexed.

[a]t Bottom, And Just In The Deepest And Most Important Things, We Are Unutterably Alone, And For One Person To Be Able To Advise Or Even Help Another, A Lot Must Happen, A Lot Must Go Well, A Whole Constellation Of Things Must Come Right In Order Once To Succeed.

Dig Deep Into Your Heart, Where The Answer Spreads Its Roots In Your Being, And Ask Yourself Solemnly, Must I Write?

No, We Don't Accomplish Our Love In A Single Year As The Flowers Do; An Immemorial Sap Flows Up Through Our Arms When We Love. Dear Girl, This: That We Loved, Inside Us, Not One Who Would Someday Appear, But Seething Multitudes; Not Just A Single Child, But Also The Fathers Lying In Our Depths Like Fallen Mountains; Also The Dried-up Riverbeds Of Ancient Mothers-;also The Whole Soundless Landscape Under The Clouded Or Clear Sky Of Its Destiny -; All This, My Dear, Preceded You.

Perhaps Then, Some Day Far In The Future, You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Live Your Way Into The Answer.

I Am Too Alone In The World And Not Alone Enough To Make Every Moment Holy.

This Above All-ask Yourself In The Stillest Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write? Delve Into Yourself For A Deep Answer. And If This Should Be Affirmative, If You May Meet This Earnest Question With A Strong And Simple "i Must," Then Build Your Life According To This Necessity; Your Life Even Into Its Most Indifferent And Slightest Hour Must Be A Sign Of This Urge And A Testimony To It. Then Draw Near To Nature. Then Try, Like Some First Human Being, To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.

Perhaps The Great Renewal Of The World Will Consist Of This, That Man And Woman, Freed Of All Confused Feelings And Desires, Shall No Longer Seek Each Other As Opposites, But Simply As Members Of A Family And Neighbors, And Will Unite As Human Beings, In Order To Simply, Earnestly, Patiently, And Jointly Bear The Heavy Responsibility Of Sexuality That Has Been Entrusted To Them.

Our Being Is Continually Undergoing And Entering Upon Changes. ... We Must, Strictly Speaking, At Every Moment Give Each Other Up And Let Each Other Go And Not Hold Each Other Back.

Whoever You Are: In The Evening Step Out Of Your Room, Where You Know Everything; Yours Is The Last House Before The Far-off: Whoever You Are. With Your Eyes, Which In Their Weariness Barely Free Themselves From The Worn-out Threshold, You Lift Very Slowly One Black Tree And Place It Against The Sky: Slender, Alone. And You Have Made The World. And It Is Huge And Like A Word Which Grows Ripe In Silence. And As Your Will Seizes On Its Meaning, Tenderly Your Eyes Let It Go.

At The Bottom No One In Life Can Help Anyone Else In Life; This One Experiences Over And Over In Every Conflict And Every Perplexity: That One Is Alone. That Isn't As Bad As It May First Appear; And Again It Is The Best Thing In Life That Each Should Have Everything In Himself; His Fate, His Future, His Whole Expanse And World.

Joy Is A Marvelous Increasing Of What Exists, A Pure Addition Out Of Nothingness.

Isn't It Time That These Most Ancient Sorrows Of Ours Grew Fruitful? Time That We Tenderly Loosed Ourselves From The Loved One, And, Unsteadily, Survived: The Way The Arrow, Suddenly All Vector, Survives The String To Be More Than Itself. For Abiding Is Nowhere.

May What I Do Flow From Me Like A River, No Forcing And No Holding Back, The Way It Is With Children.

You Darkness, That I Come From, I Love You More Than All The Fires That Fence In The World, For The Fire Makes A Circle Of Light For Everyone, And Then No One Outside Learns Of You. But The Darkness Pulls In Everything: Shapes And Fires, Animals And Myself, How Easily It Gathers Them! - Powers And People - And It Is Possible A Great Energy Is Moving Near Me. I Have Faith In Nights.

I Love You More

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

All Things Want To Float.

It Was Not In Me It Came And Went I Wanted To Hold It It Was Held By Wine (i No Longer Know What It Was)

Every Intensification Is Good, If It Is In Your Entire Blood, If It Isn't Intoxication Or Muddiness, But Joy Which You Can See Into, Clear To The Bottom.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Be Defeated By Greater And Greater Things.

Our Task Is To Take This Earth So Deeply And Wholly Into Ourselves That It Will Resurrect Within Our Being.

Perhaps Creating Something Is Nothing But An Act Of Profound Remembrance.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

The Future Enters Into Us, In Order To Transform Itself In Us, Long Before It Happens.

Oh Longing For Places That Were Not Cherished Enough In That Fleeting Hour How I Long To Make Good From Afar The Forgotten Gesture, The Additional Act.

There Is Only One Solitude, And It Is Vast, Heavy, Difficult To Bear, And Almost Everyone Has Hours When He Would Gladly Exchange It For Any Kind Of Sociability, However Trivial Or Cheap, For The Tiniest Outward Agreement With The First Person Who Comes Along.

Girls, There Are Poets Who Learn From You To Say, What You, In Your Aloneness, Are; And They Learn Through You To Live Distantness, As The Evenings Through The Great Stars Become Accustomed To Eternity.

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

Your Preparation For The Real World Is Not In The Answers You’ve Learned, But In The Questions You’ve Learned How To Ask Yourself.

Earth, Is Not This What You Will: In Us To Rise Up Invisible? Is It, O Earth, Not Your Dream Once To Be Wholly Invisible? Earth! Invisible! What, If Not Change, Is Your Desperate Mission?

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

Your Life Will Still Find Its Own Paths From There, And That They May Be Good, Rich, And Wide Is What I Wish For You, More Than I Can Say.

... Be Indulgent Toward Those Who ... Are Afraid Of The Aloneness That You Trust.

Weren't You Always Distracted By Expectation, As If Every Event Announced A Beloved? (where Can You Find A Place To Keep Her, With All The Huge Strange Thoughts Inside You Going And Coming And Often Staying All Night.).

We Are Not Permitted To Linger, Even With What Is Most Intimate.

It Is A Tremendous Act Of Violence To Begin Anything. I Am Not Able To Begin. I Simply Skip What Should Be The Beginning.

Go Into Yourself And See How Deep The Place Is From Which Your Life Flows.

Embrace Your Solitude And Love It. Endure The Pain It Causes, And Try To Sing Out With It. For Those Near To You Are Distant.

If Only It Were Possible For Us To See Farther Than Our Knowledge Reaches, And Even A Little Beyond The Outworks Of Our Presentiment, Perhaps We Would Bear Our Sadnesses With Greater Trust Than We Have In Our Joys.

Love And Death Are The Great Gifts That Are Given To Us; Mostly They Are Passed On Unopened.

Find Out The Reason That Commands You To Write; See Whether It Has Spread Its Roots Into The Very Depth Of Your Heart; Confess To Yourself You Would Have To Die If You Were Forbidden To Write.

Were It Possible For Us To See Further Than Our Knowledge Reaches, And Yet A Little Way Beyond The Outworks Of Our Divinings, Perhaps We Would Endure Our Sadnesses With Greater Confidence Than Our Joys. For They Are The Moments When Something New Has Entered Into Us, Something Unknown; Our Feelings Grow Mute In Shy Perplexity, Everything In Us Withdraws, A Stillness Comes, And The New, Which No One Knows, Stands In The Midst Of It And Is Silent.

They All Have Tired Mouths And Bright Seamless Souls. And A Longing (as For Sin) Sometimes Haunts Their Dreams. They Are Almost All Alike; In God's Gardens They Keep Still, Like Many, Many Intervals In His Might And Melody. Only When They Spread Their Wings Are They Wakers Of A Wind: As If God With His Broad Sculptor- Hands Leafed Through The Pages In The Dark Book Of The Beginning.

My Eyes Already Touch The Sunny Hill. Going Far Ahead Of The Road I Have Begun. So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp; It Has Inner Light, Even From A Distance- And Charges Us, Even If We Do Not Reach It, Into Something Else, Which, Hardly Sensing It, We Already Are; A Gesture Waves Us On Answering Our Own Wave... But What We Feel Is The Wind In Our Faces.

O How All Things Are Far Removed And Long Have Passed Away. I Do Believe The Star, Whose Light My Face Reflects, Is Dead And Has Been So For Many Thousand Years. I Had A Vision Of A Passing Boat And Heard Some Voices Saying Disquieting Things. I Heard A Clock Strike In Some Distant House... But In Which House?... I Long To Quiet My Anxious Heart And Stand Beneath The Sky's Immensity. I Long To Pray... And One Of All The Stars Must Still Exist. I Do Believe That I Would Know Which One Alone Endured, And Which Like A White City Stands At The Ray's End Shining In The Heavens.

Do Not Be Bewildered By The Surfaces: In The Depths All Becomes Law.

It Is True That These Mysteries Are Dreadful, And People Have Always Drawn Away From Them. But Where Can We Find Anything Sweet And Glorious That Would Never Wear This Mask, The Mask Of The Dreadful? Whoever Does Not, Sometimes Or Other, Give His Full Consent, His Full And Joyous Consent To The Dreadfulness Of Life, Can Never Take Possession Of The Unutterable Abundance And Power Of Our Existence; Can Only Walk On Its Edge, And One Day, When The Judgment Is Given, Will Have Been Neither Alive Nor Dead.

Why Don't You Think Of [god] As The One Who Is Coming, Who Has Been Approaching From All Eternity... The Ultimate Fruit Of A Tree Whose Leaves We Are.

It Is Not Inertia Alone That Is Responsible For Human Relationships Repeating Themselves From Case To Case, Indescribably Monotonous And Unrenewed: It Is Shyness Before Any Sort Of New, Unforeseeable Experience With Which One Does Not Think Oneself Able To Cope. But Only Someone Who Is Ready For Everything, Who Excludes Nothing, Not Even The Most Enigmatical Will Live The Relation To Another As Something Alive.

I Know Of No Other Advice Than This: Go Within And Scale The Depths Of Your Being From Which Your Very Life Springs Forth.

Go Into Yourself And Test The Deeps In Which Your Life Takes Rise; At Its Source You Will Find The Answer To The Question Whether You Must Create. Accept It, Just As It Sounds, Without Inquiring Into It. Perhaps It Will Turn Out That You Are Called To Be An Artist. Then Take That Destiny Upon Yourself And Bear It, Its Burden And Its Greatness, Without Ever Asking What Reward Might Come From Outside

Surely All Art Is The Result Of One's Having Been In Danger, Of Having Gone Through An Experience All The Way To The End, Where No One Can Go Any Further.

People Have (with The Help Of Conventions) Oriented All Their Solutions Toward The Easy And Toward The Easiest Side Of The Easy; But It Is Clear That We Must Hold To What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Holds To It, Everything In Nature Grows And Defends Itself In Its Own Way And Is Characteristically And Spontaneously Itself, Seeks At All Costs To Be So And Against All Opposition.

Look, Lovers: Almost Separately They Come Towards Us Through The Flowery Grass And Slowly; Parting's So Far From Thought Of, They Indulge The Extravagance Of Walking Unembraced.

Spring Has Again Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Many Poems. Many, O So Many. For The Hardship Of Such Long Learning She Receives The Prize. Strict Was Her Teacher. The White In The Old Man's Beard Pleases Us. Now, What To Call Green, To Call Blue, We Dare To Ask: She Knows, She Knows!

How I Will Cherish You Then, You Grief-torn Nights! Had I Only Received You, Inconsolable Sisters, On More Abject Knees, Only Buried Myself With More Abandon In Your Loosened Hair. How We Waste Our Afflictions! We Study Them, Stare Out Beyond Them Into Bleak Continuance, Hoping To Glimpse Some End. Whereas They're Really Our Wintering Foliage, Our Dark Greens Of Meaning, One Of The Seasons Of The Clandestine Year -- ; Not Only A Season --: They're Site, Settlement, Shelter, Soil, Abode.

Falling Stars: Do You Remember Still The Falling Stars That Like Swift Horses Through The Heavens Raced And Suddenly Leaped Across The Hurdles Of Our Wishes -- Do You Recall? And We Did Make So Many! For There Were Countless Numbers Of Stars: Each Time We Looked Above We Were Astounded By The Swiftness Of Their Daring Play, While In Our Hearts We Felt Safe And Secure Watching These Brilliant Bodies Disintegrate, Knowing Somehow We Had Survived Their Fall.

Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Cannot Yet Know Love: They Have To Learn It.

Why Should You Want To Give Up A Child's Wise Not-understanding In Exchange For Defensiveness And Scorn, Since Not-understanding Is, After All, A Way Of Being Alone, Whereas Defensiveness And Scorn Are A Participation In Precisely What, By These Means, You Want To Separate Yourself From.

If We Surrendered To Earth’s Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees. Instead We Entangle Ourselves In Knots Of Our Own Making And Struggle, Lonely And Confused. So Like Children, We Begin Again... To Fall, Patiently To Trust Our Heaviness. Even A Bird Has To Do That Before He Can Fly. (from The Poem "how Sure Gravity's Law")

Every Happiness Is The Child Of A Separation It Did Not Think It Could Survive.

Life And Death: They Are One, At Core Entwined. Who Understands Himself From His Own Strain Presses Himself Into A Drop Of Wine And Throws Himself Into The Purest Flame.

Interior Of The Hand. Sole That Has Come To Walk Only On Feelings. That Faces Upward And In Its Mirror Receives Heavenly Roads, Which Travel Along Themselves. That Has Learned To Walk Upon Water When It Scoops, That Walks Upon Wells, Transfiguring Every Path. That Steps Into Other Hands, Changes Those That Are Like It Into A Landscape: Wanders And Arrives Within Them, Fills Them With Arrival.

You, Darkness, Of Whom I Am Born- I Love You More Than The Flame That Limits The World To The Circle It Illumines And Excludes The Rest.

I Love You More

What Keeps You From... Living Your Life As A Painful And Lovely Day In The History Of A Great Pregnancy?

The Work Of The Eyes Is Done. Go Now And Do The Heart-work On The Images Imprisoned Within You.

Who Has Not Sat Before His Own Heart's Curtain? It Lifts: And The Scenery Is Falling Apart.

Falling In Love

I Learn It Every Day Of My Life, Learn It With Pain I Am Grateful For: Patience Is Everything!

The Knowledge Of Impermanence That Haunts Our Days Is Their Very Fragrance.

Make Your Ego Porous. Will Is Of Little Importance, Complaining Is Nothing, Fame Is Nothing. Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

For Our Part, When We Feel, We Evaporate; Ah, We Breathe Ourselves Out And Away; With Each New Heartfire We Give Off A Fainter Scent. True, Someone May Tell Us: You're In My Blood, This Room, Spring Itself Is Filled With You . . . To What End? He Can't Hold Us, We Vanish Within Him And Around Him.

What Else Can I Tell You? It Seems To Me That Everything Has Its Proper Emphasis; And Finally I Want To Add Just One More Bit Of Advice: To Keep Growing, Silently And Earnestly, Through Your Whole Development; You Couldn't Disturb It Any More Violently Than By Looking Outside And Waiting For Outside Answers To Questions That Only Your Innermost Feeling, In Your Quietest Hour, Can Perhaps Answer.

I Want To Unfold. I Don't Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie, And I Want My Grasp Of Things To Be True. I Want To Describe Myself Like A Painting That I Looked At Closely For A Long Time, Like A Saying That I Finally Understood, Like The Pitcher I Use Every Day, Like The Face Of My Mother, Like A Ship That Carried Me Through The Wildest Storm Of All.

Often A Star Was Waiting For You To Notice It. A Wave Rolled Toward You Out Of The Distant Path, Or As You Walked Under An Open Window, A Violin Yielded Itself To Your Hearing. All This Was Mission.

Poetic Power Is Great, Strong As A Primitive Instinct; It Has Its Own Unyielding Rhythms In Itself And Breaks Out As Out Of Mountains.

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

Just As Language Has No Longer Anything In Common With The Thing It Names, So The Movements Of Most Of The People Who Live In Cities Have Lost Their Connection With The Earth; They Hang, As It Were, In The Air, Hover In All Directions, And Find No Place Where They Can Settle.

Someday You Will Name Me, Then Gently Place Those Burning Holy Roses In My Hair.

Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Do Not Despair If The Answers Don't Come Immediately. Some Answers Are Only Revealed With The Passage Of Time.

Do Not, Do Not, Do Not Books For Ever Hammer At People Like Perpetual Bells? When, Between Two Books, Silent Sky Appears: Be Glad

I Want To Unfold. I Don’t Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.

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 Alien Will Become What We Most Trust And Find Most Faithful.

He Does Not Always Remain Bent Over The Pages; He Often Leans Back And Closes His Eyes Over A Line He Has Been Reading Again, And Its Meaning Spreads Through His Blood.

There Are Moments In Which A Rose Is More Important Than A Piece Of Bread

At No Other Time (than Autumn) Does The Earth Let Itself Be Inhaled In One Smell, The Ripe Earth; In A Smell That Is In No Way Inferior To The Smell Of The Sea, Bitter Where It Borders On Taste, And More Honeysweet Where You Feel It Touching The First Sounds. Containing Depth Within Itself, Darkness, Something Of The Grave Almost.

What We Do Battle With Is So Small, What Battles Us Is So Large.

Life Is Cut To Allow For Growth ... One May Vigorously Put On Weight Before One Fills It Out Entirely.

Ah, Not To Be Cut Off, Not Through The Slightest Partition Shut Out From The Law Of The Stars. The Inner -- What Is It? If Not The Intensified Sky, Hurled Through With Birds And Deep With The Winds Of Homecoming.

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. Everything You Can Think Of As You Face Your Childhood, Is Good. Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good, If It Is In Your Entire Blood, If It Isn't Intoxication Or Muddiness, But Joy Which You Can See Into, Clear To The Bottom.

I Am A House Gutted By Fire Where Only The Guilty Sometimes Sleep Before The Punishment That Devours Them Hounds Them Out In The Open.

But Learning-time Is Always A Long, Secluded Time, And So Loving, For A Long While Ahead And Far On Into Life, Is-solitude, Intensified And Deepened Loneness For Him Who Loves.

What Is Needed Is, In The End, Simply This: Solitude, Great Inner Solitude.

Live Your Questions Now, And Perhaps Even Without Knowing It, You Will Live Along Some Distant Day Into Your Answers.

You See, I Want A Lot. Perhaps I Want Everything The Darkness That Comes With Every Infinite Fall And The Shivering Blaze Of Every Step Up. So Many Live On And Want Nothing And Are Raised To The Rank Of Prince By The Slippery Ease Of Their Light Judgments But What You Love To See Are Faces That Do Work And Feel Thirst. You Love Most Of All Those Who Need You As They Need A Crowbar Or A Hoe. You Have Not Grown Old, And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out Its Own Secret.

It Is Possible I Am Pushing Through Solid Rock, Like The Vein Of Ore Encased, Alone. I Am Such A Long Way In I Can See No Way Through And No Space. Everything Is Close To My Face And Everything Close To My Face Is Stone. I Don't Have Much Knowledge Yet In Grief, So This Darkness Makes Me Feel Small. You, Be The Master; Make Yourself Fierce; Break In. And Then Your Great Transforming Will Happen To Me And My Great Grief Cry Will Happen To You.

There May Be Good, But There Are No Pleasant Marriages.

Life + A Cat ... Adds Up To An Incalculable Sum.

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. Perhaps You Will Then Gradually, Without Noticing It, Live Along Some Distant Day Into The Answer.

My Blood Is Alive With Many Voices Telling Me I Am Made Of Longing.

She Who Reconciles The Ill-matched Threads Of Her Life, And Weaves Them Gratefully Into A Single Cloth – It’s She Who Drives The Loudmouths From The Hall And Clears It For A Different Celebration.

You Have Had Many Sadnesses, Large Ones, Which Passed. ... But Please, Ask Yourself Whether These Large Sadnesses Haven't Rather Gone Right Through You [that Is, Passed Through You]. Perhaps Many Things Inside You Have Been Transformed; Perhaps Somewhere, Someplace Deep Inside Your Being, You Have Undergone Important Changes While You Were Sad.

Understand, I'll Slip Quietly Away From The Noisy Crowd When I See The Pale Stars Rising, Blooming, Over The Oaks. I'll Pursue Solitary Pathways Through The Pale Twilit Meadows With Only This One Dream: You Come Too.

So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp.

There Would Have To Be Bread, Some Rich, Whole-grain Bread And Zwieback, And Perhaps On A Long, Narrow Dish Some Pale Westphalian Ham Laced With Strips Of White Fat Like An Evening Sky With Bands Of Clouds. There Would Be Some Tea Ready To Be Drunk, Yellowish Golden Tea In Glasses With Silver Saucers, Giving Off A Faint Fragrance.

You Darkness, That I Come From, I Love You More Than All The Fires That Fence In The World.

I Love You More

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

Fame Is The Sum Of The Misunderstanding That Gathers About A New Name.

She Followed Slowly, Taking A Long Time, As Though There Were Some Obstacles In The Way; And Yet: As Though, Once It Was Overcome, She Would Be Beyond All Walking, And Would Fly.

The Quieter We Are, The More Patient And Open We Are In Our Sadnesses, The More Deeply And Serenely The New Presence Can Enter Us, And The More We Can Make It Our Own, The More It Becomes Our Fate.

Someday There Will Be Girls And Women Whose Name Will No Longer Mean The Mere Opposite Of The Male, But Something In Itself, Something That Makes One Think Not Of Any Complement And Limit, But Only Life And Reality: The Female Human Being.

Extinguish My Eyes, I'll Go On Seeing You. Seal My Ears, I'll Go On Hearing You. And Without Feet I Can Make My Way To You, Without A Mouth I Can Swear Your Name. Break Off My Arms, I'll Take Hold Of You With My Heart As With A Hand. Stop My Heart, And My Brain Will Start To Beat. And If You Consume My Brain With Fire, I'll Feel You Burn In Every Drop Of My Blood.

A Billion Stars Go Spinning Through The Night, / Glittering Above Your Head, / But In You Is The Presence That Will Be / When All The Stars Are Dead.

And Yet, For Some Time Now I Have Believed That It Is Our Own Force, All Our Own Force That Is Still Too Great For Us. It Is True We Do Not Know It; But Is It Not Just That Which Is Most Our Own Of Which We Know The Least?

We Ignore The Gods And Fill Our Minds With Trash.

Where I Create, There I Am True.

Things Aren't All So Tangible And Sayable As People Would Usually Have Us Believe; Most Experiences Are Unsayable, They Happen In A Space That No Word Has Ever Entered, And More Unsayable Than All Other Things Are Works Of Art, Those Mysterious Existences, Whose Life Endures Beside Our Own Small, Transitory Life

Huge Lemons, Cut In Slices, Would Sink Like Setting Suns Into The Dusky Sea, Softly Illuminating It With Their Radiating Membranes, And Its Clear, Smooth Surface Aquiver From The Rising Bitter Essence.

Fig Tree, How Long It's Been Full Meaning For Me, The Way You Almost Entirely Omit To Flower And Into The Seasonably-resolute Fruit Uncelebratedly Thrust Your Purest Secret. Like The Tube Of A Fountain, Your Bent Bough Drives The Sap Downwards And Up: And It Leaps From Its Sleep, Scarce Waking, Into The Joy Of Its Sweetest Achievement.

I Live Not In Dreams But In Contemplation Of A Reality That Is Perhaps The Future.

Whoever Now Makes Himself Bigger, Freer And More Human In His Own Existence, Is Doing His Part Toward Peace, — As Yet It Must Be Worked At In An Inward Direction, Not Until A Few Have It All Big And Ready Within Them Can It Let Itself Be Brought Into The World.

To Be Loved Means To Be Consumed. To Love Is To Give Light With Inexhaustible Oil. To Be Loved Is To Pass Away, To Love Is To Endure.

Let Everything Happen To You Beauty And Terror Just Keep Going No Feeling Is Final

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

For One Human Being To Love Another; That Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Of All Our Tasks, The Ultimate, The Last Test And Proof, The Work For Which All Other Work Is But Preparation.

You Have Had Many And Great Sadnesses, Which Passed. And You Say That Even This Passing Was Hard For You And Put You Out Of Sorts. But, Please, Consider Whether These Great Sadnesses Have Not Rather Gone Right Through The Center Of Yourself? Whether Much In You Has Not Altered, Whether You Have Not Somewhere, At Some Point Of Your Being, Undergone A Change When You Were Sad?

Be-and Yet Know The Great Void Where All Things Begin, The Infinite Source Of Your Own Most Intense Vibration, So That, This Once, You May Give It Your Perfect Assent.

To All That Is Used-up, And To All The Muffled And Dumb Creatures In The World's Full Reserve, The Unsayable Sums, Joyfully Add Yourself, And Cancel The Count.

For Poems Are Not, As People Think, Simply Emotions (one Has Emotions Early Enough)-they Are Experiences.

True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.

Be Forever Dead In Eurydice-more Gladly Arise Into The Seamless Life Proclaimed In Your Song. Here, In The Realm Of Decline, Among Momentary Days, Be The Crystal Cup That Shattered Even As It Rang.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors, And One Has To Leave Them Alone Completely, So That They Can Settle The Matter Among Themselves. Their Intercourse: This Is The Whole Of Painting. Whoever Meddles, Arranges, Injects His Human Deliberation, His Wit, His Advocacy, His Intellectual Agility In Any Way, Is Already Disturbing And Clouding Their Activity.

I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone.

Love Is Like The Measles. The Older You Get It, The Worse The Attack.

Perhaps Somewhere, Someplace Deep Inside Your Being, You Have Undergone Important Changes While You Were Sad.

This Is The Miracle That Happens Every Time To Those Who Really Love: The More They Give, The More They Possess.

Destiny Itself Is Like A Wonderful Wide Tapestry In Which Every Thread Is Guided By An Unspeakable Tender Hand, Placed Beside Another Thread And Held And Carried By A Hundred Others.

It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.

Sooner Or Later

Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is In The Right, Always.

Look, I Am Living. On What? Neither Childhood Nor Future Lessens . . . . Superabundant Existence Wells In My Heart.

But Because Truly Being Here Is So Much; Because Everything Here Apparently Needs Us, This Fleeting World, Which In Some Strange Way Keeps Calling To Us. Us, The Most Fleeting Of All.

The Point Of Marriage Is Not To Create A Quick Commonality By Tearing Down All Boundaries On The Contrary, A Good Marriage Is One In Which Each Partner Appoints The Other To Be The Guardian Of His Solitude, And Thus They Show Each Other The Greatest Possible Trust.

And You Suddenly Know: It Was Here! You Pull Yourself Together, And There Stands An Irrevocable Year Of Anguish And Vision And Prayer.

This Is What The Things Can Teach Us: To Fall, Patiently To Trust Our Heaviness. Even A Bird Has To Do That Before He Can Fly.

No Experience Has Been Too Unimportant, And The Smallest Event Unfolds Like A Fate, And Fate Itself Is Like A Wonderful, Wide Fabric In Which Every Thread Is Guided By An Infinitely Tender Hand And Laid Alongside Another Thread And Is Held And Supported By A Hundred Others

The Flower Bends When The Wind Wants It To, And You Must Become Like That-that Is, Filled With Deep #‎ Trust .

Once The Realization Is Accepted That Even Between The Closest Human Beings Infinite Distances Continue, A Wonderful Living Side By Side Can Grow, If They Succeed In Loving The Distance Between Them Which Makes It Possible For Each To See The Other Whole Against The Sky.

Stand Up During Supper And Walk Outdoors, And Keep On Walking.

Every Angel Is Terrifying.

Ask Yourself In The Most Silent Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write [create]? Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer.

Comfort Me From Wherever You Are–alone, We Are Quickly Worn Out; If I Place My Head On The Road, Let It Seem Softened By You. Could It Be That Even From Afar We Offer Each Other A Gentle Breath?

Sometime We Will Have To Stop Overevaluating The Word. We Shall Learn To Realize That It Is Only One Of The Many Bridges That Connect The Island Of Our Soul With The Great Continent Of Common Life. . . The Broadest, Perhaps, But In No Way The Most Refined.

Who Speaks Of Conquering? To Endure Is Everything.

It Seems To Me That The Only Way One Can Be Helpful Is To Extend One's Hand To Someone Else Involuntarily, And Without Ever Knowing How Useful This Will Be.

Somewhere There Is An Ancient Enmity Between Our Daily Life And The Great Work. Help Me In Saying It, To Understand It.

Most People Come To Know Only One Corner Of Their Room, One Spot Near The Window, One Narrow Strip On Which They Keep Walking Back And Forth.

The Sky Puts On The Darkening Blue Coat Held For It By A Row Of Ancient Trees; You Watch: And The Lands Grow Distant In Your Sight, One Journeying To Heaven, One That Falls; And Leave You, Not At Home In Either One, Not Quite So Still And Dark As The Darkened Houses, Not Calling To Eternity With The Passion Of What Becomes A Star Each Night, And Rises; And Leave You (inexpressibly To Unravel) Your Life, With Its Immensity And Fear, So That, Now Bounded, Now Immeasurable It Is Alternately Stone In You And Star.

We Must Accept Our Reality As Vastly As We Possibly Can; Everything, Even The Unprecedented, Must Be Possible Within It.

Fate Loves To Invent Patterns And Designs. Its Difficulty Lies In Complexity. But Life Itself Is Difficult Because Of Its Simplicity. It Has Only A Few Things Of A Grandeur Not Fit For Us.

As If No One Had Ever Tried Before, Try To Say What You See And Feel And Love And Lose.

I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone Enough

You Are Also The Physician Who Must Watch Over Yourself. But In The Course Of Every Illness There Are Many Days In Which The Physician Can Do Nothing But Wait.

You Who Let Yourselves Feel: Enter The Breathing That Is More Than Your Own. Let It Brush Your Cheeks As It Divides And Rejoins Behind You. The Trees You Planted In Childhood Have Grown Too Heavy. You Cannot Bring Them Along. Give Yourselves To The Air, To What You Cannot Hold.

Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.

Wanting To Change, To Improve, A Person's Situation Means Offering Him, For Difficulties In Which He Is Practiced And Experienced, Other Difficulties That Will Find Him Perhaps Even More Bewildered.

I Have Patience For Centuries In Me And Will Live As Though My Time Were Very Big.

Having Patience

The Only Sadnesses That Are Dangerous And Unhealthy Are The Ones That We Carry Around In Public In Order To Drown Them Out With The Noise; Like Diseases That Are Treated Superficially And Foolishly, They Just Withdraw And After A Short Interval Break Out Again All The More Terribly; And Gather Inside Us And Are Life, Are Life That Is Unlived, Rejected, Lost, Life That We Can Die Of.

Here Is The Time For The Sayable, Here Is Its Home. Speak And Attest. More Than Ever The Things We Can Live With Are Falling Away, And Ousting Them, Filling Their Place, A Will With No Image. Will Beneath Crusts Which Readily Crack Whenever The Act Inside Swells And Seeks New Borders.

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.

No, No, One Can Imagine Nothing In The World, Not The Least Thing. Everything Is Composed Of So Many Isolated Details That Are Not To Be Foreseen. In One's Imagining One Passes Over Them And Hasty As One Is Doesn't Notice That They Are Missing. But Realities Are Slow And Indescribably Detailed.

And You Should Not Let Yourself Be Confused In Your Solitude By The Fact That There Is Something In You That Wants To Move Out Of It.

It Is Good To Say It Aloud: 'nothing Has Happened.' Once Again: 'nothing Has Happened.' Does That Help?"

We Are Continually Overflowing Toward Those Who Preceded Us, Toward Our Origin, And Toward Those Who Seemingly Come After Us. ... It Is Our Task To Imprint This Temporary, Perishable Earth Into Ourselves So Deeply, So Painfully And Passionately, That Its Essence Can Rise Again “invisibly,” Inside Us. We Are The Bees Of The Invisible. We Wildly Collect The Honey Of The Visible, To Store It In The Great Golden Hive Of The Invisible.

The Creator Must Be A World For Himself And Must Find Everything In Himself And In Nature, To Whom His Whole Life Is Devoted.

Rose, Oh Pure Contradiction, Joy Of Being No-one's Sleep Under So Many Lids.

I Would Like To Sing Someone To Sleep, To Sit Beside Someone And Be There. I Would Like To Rock You And Sing Softly And Go With You To And From Sleep. I Would Like To Be The One In The House Who Knew: The Night Was Cold. And I Would Like To Listen In And Listen Out Into You, Into The World, Into The Woods. The Clocks Shout To One Another Striking, And One Sees To The Bottom Of Time. And Down Below One Last, Strange Man Walks By And Rouses A Strange Dog. And After That Comes Silence. I Have Laid My Eyes Upon You Wide; And They Hold You Gently And Let You Go When Something Stirs In The Dark.

Strangely, I Heard A Stranger Say, I Am With You.

More Unsayable Than All Other Things Are Works Of Art, Those Mysterious Existences, Whose Life Endures Beside Our Own Small, Transitory Life.

Those Doves Below, The Ones Utterly Cared For, Never Endangered Ones, Cannot Know Tenderness.

Yet Everything That Touches Us, Me And You, Takes Us Together Like A Violin's Bow, Which Draws One Voice Out Of Two Separate Strings.

We Discover That We Do Not Know Our Role; We Look For A Mirror; We Want To Remove Our Make-up And Take Off What Is False And Real. But Somewhere A Piece Of Disguise That We Forgot Still Sticks To Us. A Trace Of Exaggeration Remains In Our Eyebrows; We Do Not Notice That The Corners Of Our Mouth Are Bent. And So We Walk Around, A Mockery And A Mere Half: Neither Having Achieved Being Nor Actors.

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Francine Pascal

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