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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.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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For One Human Being

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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.

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

Irony: Don't Let Yourself Be Controlled By It, Especially During Uncreative Moments.

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.

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.

I Hold This To Be The Highest Task For A Bond Between Two People: That Each Protects The Solitude Of The Other.

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

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

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.

Your Solitude Will Expand And Become A Place Where You Can Live In The Twilight, Where The Noise Of Other People Passes, Far In The Distance.

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.

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.

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

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.

And These Things That Keep Alive On Departure Know That You Praise Them; Transient, They Look To Us, The Most Transient, To Be Their Rescue. They Want Us To Change Them Completely, In Our Invisible Hearts, Into -- O Endlessly -- Us! Whoever, Finally, We May Be.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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.

Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.

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.

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

I Implore Those Who Love Me To Love My Solitude.

You Must Think That Something Is Happening Upon You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In Its Hand; It Will Not Let You Fall.

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

Believe In A Love That Is Being Stored Up For You Like An Inheritance, And Have Faith That In This Love There Is A Strength And A Blessing So Large That You Can Travel As Far As You Wish Without Having To Step Outside It.

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.

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.

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

As Bees Gather Honey, So We Collect What Is Sweetest Out Of All Things And Build.

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.

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.

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

I Beg You, To Have Patience With Everything Unresolved In Your Heart And To Try To Love The Questions Themselves As If They Were Locked Rooms Or Books Written In A Very Foreign Language.

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?

All Things Want To Float.

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.

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.

That’s Love: Two Lonely Persons Keep Each Other Safe And Touch Each Other And Talk To Each Other.

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.

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

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

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.

Some Day When I Lose You, Will You Still Be Able To Sleep, Without Me To Whisper Over You Like A Crown Of Linden Branches?

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]

I Am Circling Around God, Around The Ancient Tower, And I Have Been Circling For A Thousand Years, And I Still Don't Know If I Am A Falcon, Or A Storm, Or A Great Song.

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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.

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

May You Gain More And More Confidence In What Is Difficult And In Your Solitude Among Other People.

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.

True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

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

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

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

And Still It Is Not Enough To Have Memories. One Must Be Able To Forget Them When They Are Many, And One Must Have The Great Patience To Wait Until They Come Again. For It Is Not Yet The Memories Themselves. Not Until They Have Turned To Blood Within Us, To Glance, To Gesture, Nameless And No Longer To Be Distinguished From Ourselves - Not Until Then Can It Happen That In A Most Rare Hour The First Word Of A Verse Arises In Their Midst And Goes Forth From Them.

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.

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.

And We, Spectators Always, Everywhere, Looking At, Never Out Of, Everything! It Fills Us. We Arrange It. It Collapses. We Re-arrange It, And Collapse Ourselves. Who's Turned Us Round Like This, So That We Always, Do What We May, Retain The Attitude Of Someone Who's Departing? Just As He, On The Last Hill, That Shows Him All His Valley For The Last Time, Will Turn And Stop And Linger, We Live Our Lives, For Ever Taking Leave.

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.

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

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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)

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.

Death Is The Side Of Life Which Is Turned Away From Us.

Now For Some Heartwork.

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.

If Your Everyday Life Appears To Be Unworthy Subject Matter, Do Not Complain To Life. Complain To Yourself, Lament That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Up Its Wealth.

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.

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.

He Was A Worker Whose Only Desire Was To Penetrate With All His Forces Into The Humble And Difficult Significance Of His Tools. Therein Lay A Certain Renunciation Of Life, But In Just This Renunciation Lay His Triumph, For Life Entered Into His Work.

That Is The Principal Thing-not To Remain With The Dream, With The Intention, With The Being-in-the-mood, But Always Forcibly To Convert It All Into Things.

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

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.

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

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

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.

Life - A Sexually Transmitted Terminal Condition.

But Suppose The Endlessly Dead Were To Wake In Us Some Emblem: They Might Point To The Catkins Hanging From The Empty Hazel Trees, Or Direct Us To The Rain Descending On Black Earth In Early Spring. --- And We, Who Always Think Of Happiness Rising, Would Feel The Emotion That Almost Baffles Us When A Happy Thing Falls.

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.

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.

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!

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

The Deep Parts Of My Life Pour Onward, As If The River Shores Were Opening Out. I Feel Closer To What Language Can't Reach. With My Senses, As With Birds, I Climb Into The Windy Heaven... In The Ponds Broken Off From The Sky. . .

Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.

There Is Time Only To Work Slowly There Is No Time Not To Love

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.

That Is Why Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Are Not Yet Capable Of Love: It Is Something They Must Learn. With Their Whole Being, With All Their Forces, Gathered Around Their Solitary, Anxious, Upward-beating Heart, They Must Learn To Love.

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

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.

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.

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

It Wasn't His, It Wasn't My Fault, We Both Had Nothing Except Patience, But Death Has None. I Saw Him Come (how Meanly!) And I Watched Him As He Took And Took: None Of It I Could Claim As Mine.

You Are Nearing The Land That Is Life; You Will Recognize It By Its Seriousness.

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

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.

Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Seperate, In The Evening.

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.

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

This Is The Miracle That Happens Every Time To Those Who Really Love; The More They Give, The More They Possess Of That Precious Nourishing Love From Which Flowers And Children Have Their Strength And Which Could Help All Human Beings If They Would Take It Without Doubting.

Being An Artist Means, Not Reckoning And Counting, But Ripening Like The Tree Which Does Not Force Its Sap And Stands Confidence In The Storms Of Spring Without Fear That After Them May Come No Summer

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

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.

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

Falling In Love

You, Beloved, Who Are All The Gardens I Have Ever Gazed At, Longing. An Open Window In A Country House - , And You Almost Stepped Out, Pensive, To Meet Me. Streets That I Chanced Upon, - You Had Just Walked Down Them And Vanished. And Sometimes, In A Shop, The Mirrors Were Still Dizzy With Your Presence And, Startled, Gave Back My Too-sudden Image. Who Knows? Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Separate, In The Evening.

It Is Always What I Have Already Said: Always The Wish That You May Find Patience Enough In Yourself To Endure, And Simplicity Enough To Believe; That You May Acquire More And More Confidence In That Which Is Difficult, And In Your Solitude Among Others. And For The Rest, Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is Right, In Any Case.

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.

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.

To Write Rhythmic Prose One Must Go Deep Into Oneself And Find The Anonymous And Multiple Rhythm Of The Blood. Prose Needs To Be Built Like A Cathedral. There, One Is Truly Without A Name, Without Ambition, Without Help; On Scaffoldings, Alone With One's Consciousness.

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.

Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper And Walks Outdoors, And Keeps On Walking, Because Of A Church That Stands Somewhere In The East. And His Children Say Blessings On Him As If He Were Dead. And Another Man, Who Remains Inside His Own House, Stays There, Inside The Dishes And In The Glasses, So That His Children Have To Go Far Out Into The World Toward That Same Church, Which He Forgot.

Our Task Is To Listen To The News That Is Always Arriving Out Of Silence.

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

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

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.

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.

To Be An Artist Means Not To Compute Or Count.

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

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.

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.

What Is Necessary, After All, Is Only This: Solitude, Vast Inner Solitude. To Walk Inside Yourself And Meet No One For Hours-that Is What You Must Be Able To Attain. To Be Solitary As You Were When You Were A Child.

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

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

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.

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

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.).

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.

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.

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

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

There Are So Many Things About Which Some Old Man Ought To Tell One While One Is Little; For When One Is Grown One Would Know Them As A Matter Of Course.

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.

Sex Is Difficult, Yes. But They Are Difficult Things With Which We Have Been Charged...if You Only Recognize This And Manage Out Of Yourself, Out Of Your Own Nature And Ways, Out Of Your Own Experience And Childhood And Strength To Achieve A Relation To Sex Wholly Your Own (not Influenced By Convention And Custom) Then You Need No Longer Be Afraid Of Losing Yourself And Becoming Unworthy Of Your Best Possession.

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.

Leave To Your Opinions Their Own Quiet Undisturbed Development, Which, Like All Progress, Must Come From Deep Within And Cannot Be Pressed Or Hurried By Anything.

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

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

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.

But Your Solitude Will Be A Support And A Home For You, Even In The Midst Of Very Unfamiliar Circumstances, And From It You Will Find All Your Paths.

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

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.

Everything Is Blooming Most Recklessly; If It Were Voices Instead Of Colors, There Would Be An Unbelievable Shrieking Into The Heart Of The Night.

Earth, My Dearest, Oh Believe Me, You No Longer Need Your Springtimes To Win Me Over...unspeakably, I Have Belonged To You, From The Flush.

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

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

We Make Our Way Through Everything Like Thread Passing Through Fabric, Giving Shape To Images That We Ourselves Do Not Know.

Perhaps All The Dragons In Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Act, Just Once, With Beauty And Courage. Perhaps Everything That Frightens Us Is, In Its Deepest Essence, Something Helpless That Wants Our Love.

Ah, How Good It Is To Be Among People Who Are Reading!

To Have A Childhood Means To Live A Thousand Lives Before The One.

You Are Not Too Old And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out It's Own Secret

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

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

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

Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Words Of Criticism: They Always Result In More Or Less Fortunate Misunderstandings.

Be Patient With All That Is Unsolved In Your Life. Learn To Love The Questions Themselves, Until Some Distant Day, Without Your Knowing, You Will Have Lived Into The Answers.

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.

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.

We Ignore The Gods And Fill Our Minds With Trash.

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.

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

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

The Point Is To Live Everything.

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.

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

. . . Denn Da Ist Keine Stelle, Die Dich Nicht Sieht. Du Musst Dein Leben Andern. (... For There Is No Place That Does Not See You. You Must Change Your Life.)

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.

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 Would Like To Beg Of You, Dear Friend, As Well As I Can, To Have Patience With Everything That Remains Unsolved In Your Heart. Try To Love The Questions Themselves, Like Locked Rooms And Like Books Written In A Foreign Language. Do Not Now Look For The Answers. They Cannot Now Be Given To You Because You Could Not Live Them. It Is A Question Of Experiencing Everything.

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

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

Falling In Love

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

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

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

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.

The Artist's Experience Lies So Unbelievably Close To The Sexual, To Its Pain And Its Pleasure, That The Two Phenomena Are Really Just Different Forms Of One And The Same Longing And Bliss.

Always Trust Yourself And Your Own Feelings, As Opposed To Arguments And Discussions. If It Turns Out That You Are Wrong, Then The Natural Growth Of Your Inner Life Will Eventually Guide You To Other Insights.

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.

His Vision, From The Constantly Passing Bars, Has Grown So Weary That It Cannot Hold Anything Else. It Seems To Him There Are A Thousand Bars, And Behind The Bars, No World. As He Paces In Cramped Circles, Over And Over, The Movement Of His Powerful Soft Strides Is Like A Ritual Dance Around A Center In Which A Mighty Will Stands Paralyzed. Only At Times, The Curtain Of The Pupils Lifts, Quietly. An Image Enters In, Rushes Down Through The Tense, Arrested Muscles, Plunges Into The Heart And Is Gone.

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.

Look, We Don't Love Like Flowers With Only One Season Behind Us; When We Love, A Sap Older Than Memory Rises In Our Arms.

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

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

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.

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Mario Balotelli

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