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And Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism. Ask It, Whenever It Wants To Spoil Something For You, Why Something Is Ugly, Demand Proofs From It, Test It, And You Will Find It Perhaps Bewildered And Embarrassed, Perhaps Also Protesting. But Don't Give In, Insist On Arguments, And Act In This Way, Attentive And Persistent, Every Single Time, And The Day Will Come When, Instead Of Being A Destroyer, It Will Become One Of Your Best Workers-perhaps The Most Intelligent Of All The Ones That Are Building Your Life.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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And Your Doubt Can

Rainer Maria Rilke

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And Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism. Ask It, Whenever It Wants To Spoil Something For You, Why Something Is Ugly, Demand Proofs From It, Test It, And You Will Find It Perhaps Bewildered And Embarrassed, Perhaps Also Protesting. But Don't Give In, Insist On Arguments, And Act In This Way, Attentive And Persistent, Every Single Time, And The Day Will Come When, Instead Of Being A Destroyer, It Will Become One Of Your Best Workers-perhaps The Most Intelligent Of All The Ones That Are Building Your Life.

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If We Only Arrange Our Life In Accordance With The Principle Which Tells Us That We Must Always Trust In The Difficult, Then What Now Appears To Us As The Most Alien Will Become Our Most Intimate And Trusted Experience. How Could We Forget Those Ancient Myths That Stand At The Beginning Of All Races, The Myths About Dragons That At The Last Moment Are Transformed Into Princesses? Perhaps All The Dragons In Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Act, Just Once, With Beauty And Courage.

The Highest Form Of Love Is To Be The Protector Of Another Person’s Solitude.

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

What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.

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

Solitude Is Nothing That One Can Choose Or Retrain From. We Are Solitary. We Can Delude Ourselves About This And Act As If It Were Not True. That Is All.

Nothing Strange Should Befall Us, But Only That Which Has Long Belonged To Us. We Will Gradually Learn To Realize That That Which We Call Destiny Goes Forth From Within People, Not From Without Into Them.

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

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

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

If We Surrendered To Earth's Intelligence We Could Rise Up Rooted, Like Trees.

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

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.

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

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.

We See The Brightness Of A New Page Where Everything Yet Can Happen.

The Moments When Something New Has Entered Us, Something Unknown; Our Feelings Grow Mute In Shy Embarrassment, Everything In Us Withdraws, A Silence Arises, And The New Experience, Which No One Knows, Stands In The Midst Of It All And Says Nothing.

New Experiences

Love The Questions Themselves...live The Questions Now And Have Confidence That Someday Far Into The Future, [i Will Live My] Way Into The Answer.

They, Who Passed Away Long Ago, Still Exist In Us, As Predisposition, As Burden Upon Our Fate, As Murmuring Blood, And As Gesture That Rises Up From The Depths Of Time.

Read As Little As Possible Of Literary Criticism - Such Things Are Either Partisan Opinions, Which Have Become Petrified And Meaningless, Hardened And Empty Of Life, Or Else They Are Just Clever Word-games, In Which One View Wins Today, And Tomorrow The Opposite View. Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Solitude, And No Means Of Approach Is So Useless As Criticism.

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

He Who Does Not At Some Time, With Definite Determination Consent To The Terribleness Of Life, Or Even Exalt In It, Never Takes Possession Of The Inexpressible Fullness Of The Power Of Our Existence.

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.

Only Someone Who Is Ready For Everything, Who Doesn't Exclude Any Experience, Even The Most Incomprehensible, Will Live The Relationship With Another Person As Something Alive And Will Himself Sound The Depths Of His Own Being.

What Is Happening On Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love.

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.

Do Not Allow Yourself To Be Misled By The Surfaces Of Things

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

But You, Divine Poet, You Sang On Till The End As The Swarm Of Rejected Maenads Attacked You, Shrieking, You Overpowered Their Noise With Harmony, And From Pure Destruction Arose Your Transfigured Song.

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

Falling In Love

I Am So Afraid Of People's Words.they Describe So Distinctly Everything: And This They Call Dog And That They Call House, Here The Start And There The End. I Worry About Their Mockery With Words, They Know Everything, What Will Be, What Was; No Mountain Is Still Miraculous; And Their House And Yard Lead Right Up To God. I Want To Warn And Object: Let The Things Be! I Enjoy Listening To The Sound They Are Making. But You Always Touch: And They Hush And Stand Still. That's How You Kill.

Let Your Beauty Manifest Itself Without Talking And Calculation. You Are Silent. It Says For You: I Am. And Comes In Meaning Thousandfold, Comes At Long Last Over Everyone.

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 Artist's Task Consists Of Making One Thing Of Many, And A World From The Smallest Part Of A Thing.

We Need, In Love, To Practice Only This: Letting Each Other Go. For Holding On Comes Easily; We Do Not Need To Learn It.

What Happens Most Deeply Inside You Is Worthy Of Your Whole Love.

For Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror Which We Are Barely Able To Endure, And It Amazes Us So, Because It Serenely Disdains To Destroy Us. Every Angel Is Terrible.

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.

I Am The Rest Between Two Notes Which Are Somehow Always In Discord.

The Deepest Experience Of The Creator Is Feminine, For It Is Experience Of Receiving And Bearing.

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?

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.

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.

The Necessary Thing Is After All But This; Solitude, Great Inner Solitude. Going Into Oneself For Hours Meeting No One - This One Must Be Able To Attain.

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.

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

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.

It Is Clear That We Must Embrace Struggle. Every Living Thing Conforms To It. Everything In Nature Grows And Struggles In Its Own Way, Establishing Its Own Identity, Insisting On It At All Cost, Against All Resistance.

And Do Not Change. Do Not Divert Your Love From Visible Things. But Go On Loving What Is Good, Simple And Ordinary; Animals And Things And Flowers, And Keep The Balance True.

Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

O Trees Of Life, O When Are You Wintering?we Are Not Unified. We Have No Instinctslike Those Of Migratory Birds. Useless, And Late,we Force Ourselves, Suddenly, Onto The Wind,and Fall Down To An Indifferent Lake.we Realise Flowering And Fading Together.and Somewhere Lions Still Roam. Never Knowing,as Long As They Have Their Splendour, Of Any Weakness.

What Do The Contours Of Your Body Mean, Laid Out Like The Lines On A Hand, So That I No Longer See Them Except As Fate?

It Almost Seems As If Autumn Were The True Creator, More Creative Than The Spring, Which Is Too Even-toned, More Creative When It Comes With Its Will-to-change And Shatters The Much Too Ready-made, Self-satisfied And Really Almost Bourgeois-complacent Image Of Summer.

It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be A Reason The More For Us To Do It.

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.

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.

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

In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.

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

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

Lord, It Is Time. The Summer Was Very Big. Lay Thy Shadow On The Sundials, And On The Meadows Let The Winds Go Loose. Command The Last Fruits That They Shall Be Full; Give Them Another Two More Southerly Days, Press Them On To Fulfillment And Drive The Last Sweetiness Into The Heavenly Wine.

If My Devils Are To Leave Me, I'm Afraid My Angels Will Take Flight As Well.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

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.

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.

It Seems To Me That Almost All Our Sadnesses Are Moments Of Tension, Which We Feel As Paralysis Because We No Longer Hear Our Astonished Emotions Living.

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

Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.

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.

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

Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Try To Love The Questions Themselves...at Present You Need To Live The Question. Perhaps You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Find Yourself Experiencing The Answer.

Finding Yourself

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.

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.

As People Used To Be Wrong About The Motion Of The Sun, So They Are Still Wrong About The Motion Of The Future. The Future Stands Still, It Is We Who Move In Infinite Space.

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

Think... Of The World You Carry Within You, And Call This Thinking Whatever You Want To: A Remembering Of Your Own Childhood Or A Yearning Toward A Future Of Your Own - Only Be Attentive To What Is Arising Within You, And Place That Above Everything You Perceive Around You. What Is Happening In Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love; Somehow You Must Find A Way To Work At It.

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.

Whoever Has No House Now, Will Never Have One. Whoever Is Alone Will Stay Alone, Will Sit, Read, Write Long Letters Through The Evening, And Wander On The Boulevards, Up And Down, Restlessly, While Dry Leaves Are Blowing.

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

God Speaks To Each Of Us As He Makes Us, Then Walks With Us Silently Out Of The Night.

Bound By Conventions, People Tend To Reach For What Is Easy. Here We Must Be Unafraid Of What Is Difficult. For All Living Beings In Nature Must Unfold In Their Particular Way And Become Themselves Despite All Opposition.

Quiet Friend Who Has Come So Far, Feel How Your Breathing Makes More Space Around You. Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower And You The Bell. As You Ring, What Batters You Becomes Your Strength. Move Back And Forth Into The Change. What Is It Like, Such Intensity Of Pain? If The Drink Is Bitter, Turn Yourself To Wine. In This Uncontainable Night, Be The Mystery At The Crossroads Of Your Senses, The Meaning Discovered There. And If The World Has Ceased To Hear You, Say To The Silent Earth: I Flow. To The Rushing Water, Speak: I Am.

Winning Does Not Tempt That Man. This Is How He Grows: By Being Defeated, Decisively, By Constantly Greater Beings.

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.

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.

He Who Understands One Thing Understands Everything, For The Same Laws Are In All.

A Work Of Art Is Good If It Has Arisen Out Of Necessity. That Is The Only Way One Can Judge It.

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

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.

Perhaps Everything Terrible Is In Its Deepest Being Something Helpless That Wants Help From Us.

I Would Like To Step Out Of My Heart And Go Walking Beneath The Enormous Sky.

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.

More Belongs To Marriage Than Four Legs In A Bed.

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.

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.

Losing Too Is Still Ours; And Even Forgetting Still Has A Shape In The Kingdom Of Transformation. When Something's Let Go Of, It Circles; And Though We Are Rarely The Center Of The Circle, It Draws Around Us Its Unbroken, Marvelous Curve.

My Art Is Representational By Choice....if The Art Of Painting Is To Survive, It Must Describe And Express People, Their Lives And Times. It Must Communicate.

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

Having Patience

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

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

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

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.

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.

We Wasters Of Sorrows! How We Stare Away Into Sad Endurance Beyond Them, Trying To Foresee Their End! Whereas They Are Nothing Else Than Our Winter Foliage, Our Sombre Evergreen, One Of The Seasons Of Our Interior Year.

One Had To Take Some Action Against Fear When Once It Laid Hold Of One.

...a Carefree Letting Go Of Oneself, Not A Caution, But A Wise Blindness.

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.

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.

Fame — The Aggregate Of All The Misunderstandings That Collect Around A New Name.

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.

Everything Is Gestation And Bringing Forth. To Let Each Impression And Each Germ Of Feeling Come To Completion Wholly In Itself, In The Dark, In The Inexpressible, The Unconscious, Beyond The Reach Of One's Own Intelligence, And Await With Deep Humility And Patience The Birth-hour Of A New Clarity: That Alone Is Living The Artist's Life.

Be Ahead Of All Farewells As If They Were Behind You, Like The Winter That Is Just Departing.

In This There Is No Measuring With Time, A Year Doesn’t Matter, And Ten Years Are Nothing. Being An Artist Means: Not Numbering And Counting, But Ripening Like A Tree, Which Doesn’t Force Its Sap, And Stands Confidently In The Storms Of Spring, Not Afraid That Afterward Summer May Not Come. It Does Come. But It Comes Only To Those Who Are Patient, Who Are There As If Eternity Lay Before Them, So Unconcernedly Silent And Vast. I Learn It Every Day Of My Life, Learn It With Pain I Am Grateful For: Patience Is Everything!

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

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

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

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

Don't Observe Yourself Too Closely. Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen.

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.

Do You Recall, From Your Childhood On, How Very Much This Life Of Yours Has Longed For Greatness? I See It Now, How From The Vantage Point Of Greatness It Longs For Even Greater Greatness. That Is Why It Does Not Let Up Being Difficult, But That Is Also Why It Will Not Cease To Grow.

God Speaks To Each Of Us As He Makes Us, Then Walks With Us Silently Out Of The Night. These Are The Words We Dimly Hear: You, Sent Out Beyond Your Recall, Go To The Limits Of Your Longing. Embody Me. Flare Up Like A Flame And Make Big Shadows I Can Move In. Let Everything Happen To You: Beauty And Terror. Just Keep Going. No Feeling Is Final. Don't Let Yourself Lose Me. Nearby Is The Country They Call Life. You Will Know It By Its Seriousness. Give Me Your Hand.

It Is So Often On The Name Of A Misdeed That A Life Goes To Pieces, Not The Nameless And Personal Action Itself, Which Was Perhaps A Perfectly Definite Necessity Of That Life And Would Have Been Absorbed By It Without Effort.

Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.

Love The Questions, Themselves.

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

Describe Your Sorrows And Desires, Passing Thoughts And The Belief In Some Sort Of Beauty-describe All These With Loving, Quiet, Humble Sincerity, And Use, To Express Yourself, The Things In Your Environment, The Images From Your Dreams, And The Objects Of Your Memory.

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.

Everyone Once, Once Only. Just Once And No More. And We Also Once. Never Again. But This Having Been Once, Although Only Once, To Have Been Of The Earth, Seems Irrevocable.

Right In The Difficult We Must Have Our Joys, Our Happiness, Our Dreams: There Against The Depth Of This Background, They Stand Out, There For The First Time We See How Beautiful They Are.

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.

A Birdsong Can Even, For A Moment, Make The Whole World Into A Sky Within Us, Because We Feel That The Bird Does Not Distinguish Between Its Heart And The World's.

May I Strike My Heart's Keys Clearly, And May None Fail Because Of Slack, Uncertain, Or Fraying Strings. May The Tears That Stream Down My Face Make Me More Radiant: May My Hidden Weeping Bloom.... How We Waste Our Afflictions!... [t]hey'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.

Just As The Creative Artist Is Not Allowed To Choose, Neither Is He Permitted To Turn His Back On Anything: A Single Refusal, And He Is Cast Out Of The State Of Grace And Becomes Sinful All The Way Through.

Perhaps Everything Terrifying Is Deep Down A Helpless Thing That Needs Our Help.

Harshness Vanished. A Sudden Softness Has Replaced The Meadows' Wintry Grey. Little Rivulets Of Water Changed Their Singing Accents. Tendernesses, Hesitantly, Reach Toward The Earth From Space, And Country Lanes Are Showing These Unexpected Subtle Risings That Find Expression In The Empty Trees.

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.

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

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

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

If You Will Stay Close To Nature, To Its Simplicity, To The Small Things Hardly Noticeable, Those Things Can Unexpectedly Become Great And Immeasurable.

Und Dastotsein Ist Mu« Hsam Und Voller Nachholn, Dass Man Allm A« Hlich Ein Wenig Ewigkeit Spu« Rt. And Being Dead Is Hard Work And Full Of Retrieval Before One Can Gradually Feel A Trace Of Eternity.

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.

Yield Not Thy Neck To Fortune's Yoke, But Let Thy Dauntless Mind Still Ride In Triumph Over All Mischance. In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.

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.

Success, Which Is Something So Simple In The End, Is Made Up Of Thousands Of Things, We Never Fully Know What.

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?

I Live My Life In Widening Circle That Reach Out Across The World. I May Not Ever Complete The Last One, But I Give Myself To It. I Circle Around God, That Primordial Tower. I Have Been Circling For Thousands Of Years, And I Still Don't Know: Am I A Falcon, A Storm, Or A Great Song? [i, 2]

Be Out Of Sync With Your Times For Just One Day, And You Will See How Much Eternity You Contain Within You.

One Moment Your Life Is A Stone In You, And The Next Moment A Star!

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.

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

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

If The Angel Deigns To Appear, It Will Be Because You Have Convinced Him, Not By Tears But By Your Humble Resolve To Be Always Beginning — To Be A Beginner!

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.

Speaking Of August Rodin: He Raised His World Above Us In An Immense Arc, And Made It A Part Of Nature.

There Are Quite A Number Of People In The Reading-room; But One Is Not Aware Of Them. They Are Inside The Books. They Move, Sometimes, Within The Pages Like Sleepers Turning Over Between Two Dreams. Ah, How Good It Is To Be Among People Who Are Reading.

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)

Of All My Books, I Find Only A Few Indispensible.

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.

I Am Touched By Your Beautiful Anxiety About Life.

I Never Read Anything Concerning My Work. I Feel That Criticism Is A Letter To The Public Which The Author, Since It Is Not Directed To Him, Does Not Have To Open And Read.

I Feel It Now: There's A Power In Me To Grasp And Give Shape To My World I Know That Nothing Has Ever Been Real Without My Beholding It. All Becoming Has Need Me.

Never Has Grief Been Possessed, Never Has Love Been Learned, And What Removes Us In Death Is Not Revealed.

Be Patient With All That Is Uncertain In Your Heart...do Not Search For Answers, Which Will Not Be Given: You Will Not Be Able To Live Them, And Its Importat To Live Everything.

Go On Loving What Is Good, Simple, And Ordinary.

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

I Love You More

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

The Thought Of Being A Creator, Of Engendering, Of Shaping Is Nothing Without The Continuous Great Confirmation And Embodiment In The World, Nothing Without The Thousandfold Assent From Things And Animals... Beautiful And Rich Only Because It Is Full Of Inherited Memories Of The Engendering And Birthing Of Millions.

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

One Of The Most Difficult Tests For The Creator: He Must Always Remain Unconscious, Unaware Of His Best Virtues, If He Doesn't Want To Rob Them Of Their Candor And Innocence.

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

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

In The Night, I Wish To Speak With The Angel To Find Out If She Recognizes My Eyes, If She Will Ask Me: Do You See Eden? And I’ll Reply: Eden Burns.

He Reproduced Himself With So Much Humble Objectivity, With The Unquestioning, Matter Of Fact Interest Of A Dog Who Sees Himself In A Mirror And Thinks: There's Another Dog.

Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Criticism.

You, God, Who Live Next Door - If At Times, Through The Long Night, I Trouble You With My Urgent Knocking - This Is Why: I Hear You Breathe So Seldom. I Know You're All Alone In That Room. If You Should Be Thirsty, There's No One To Get You A Glass Of Water. I Wait Listening, Always. Just Give Me A Sign! I'm Right Here... Sen Komşu Tanrı, Uzun Geceler Bazen, Kapına Vura Vura Uyandırıyorsam Seni Solumanı Seyrek Duyduğumdandır... Bilirim, Yalnızsın Odanda. Sana Birşey Gerekse Kimse Yok, Bir Yudum Su Versin Aradığında. Hep Dinlerim, Yeter Ki Bir Ses Edin, Öyle Yakınım Sana.

How Can I Keep My Soul In Me, So That It Doesn't Touch Your Soul? How Can I Raise It High Enough, Past You, To Other Things?

Love Consists Of This: Two Solitudes That Meet, Protect And Great Each Other.

Falling In Love

It Is Clear That We Must Trust What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Trusts In It, Everything In Nature Grows And Defends Itself Any Way It Can And Is Spontaneously Itself, Tries To Be Itself At All Costs And Against All Opposition. We Know Little, But That We Must Trust In What Is Difficult Is A Certainty That Will Never Abandon Us; It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be One More Reason For Us To Do It.

In One Creative Thought A Thousand Forgotten Nights Of Love Revive, Filling It With Sublimity And Exaltation.

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")

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Solitude, And No Means Of Approach Is So Useless As Criticism. Only Love Can Touch And Hold Them And Be Fair To Them.

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.

Animals See The Unobstructed World With Their Whole Eyes. But Our Eyes, Turned Back Upon Themselves, Encircle And Seek To Snare The World, Setting Traps For Freedom.

Works Of Art Always Spring From Those Who Have Faced The Danger, Gone To The Very End Of An Experience, To The Point Beyond Which No Human Being Can Go. The Further One Dares To Go, The More Decent, The More Personal, The More Unique A Life Becomes.

Beauty Is Only The Start Of Bearable Terror.

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

Religion Is Something Infinitely Simple, Ingenuous. It Is Not Knowledge, Not Content Of Feeling... It Is Not Duty And Not Renunciation, It Is Not Restriction: But In The Infinite Extent Of The Universe It Is A Direction Of The Heart.

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

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Edgar Rice Burroughs

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