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I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
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I Want To Be

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

Understanding the Quote: "i want to be with those who know secret things or else..."

This quote by Rainer Maria Rilke reflects deeply on the theme of loneliness. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Loneliness, Being Alone, Solitude, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Rainer Maria Rilke interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke is celebrated for insightful thoughts on loneliness and being alone. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Loneliness
Being Alone
Solitude
More From Rainer Maria Rilke
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]
Song
Circles
Years
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.
Long
Fleeting
Gestures
The Purpose Of Life Is To Be Defeated By Greater And Greater Things.
Inspirational
Life
Greatness
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.
Thinking
Doe
Alive
I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone.
Loneliness
Being Alone
Solitude
All Companionship Can Consist In Only The Strengthening Of Neighboring Solitudes, Giving Oneself Is By Nature Harmful To Companionship: For When A Person Abandons Himself, He Is No Longer Anything, And When Two People Both Give Themselves Up In Order To Become Closer To Each Other, There Is No Longer Any Ground Beneath Them And Their Being Together Is A Continual Falling – I Have Learned Over And Over Again, There Is Scarcely Anything More Difficult Than To Love One Another.
Fall
Order
Two
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?
Mean
Fate
Hands
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?
Dream
What If
Earth
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.
Love
Mean
Light
Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Cannot Yet Know Love: They Have To Learn It.
People
Beginners
Young
I Want To Unfold. I Don’t Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.
Lying
Want
Secretive
Be, In This Immensity Of Night, The Magic Force At Your Sense's Crossroad.
Night
Magic
Force
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.
Life
Heart
Answers
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.
Solitude
Wedding Day
Good Marriage
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.
Talking
Long
Lasts
Dying Is Strange And Hard If It Is Not Our Death, But A Death That Takes Us By Storm, When We've Ripened None Within Us.
Death
Dying
Storm
Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.
Wish
Idealism
Recollection
Music: Breathing Of Statues. Perhaps: Silence Of Paintings. You Language Where All Language Ends. You Time Standing Vertically On The Motion Of Mortal Hearts.
Heart
Breathing
Silence
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.
Love
Girl
Mother
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.
Sex
Pain
Lying
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.
Solitude
Able
Hours
Do Not Be Bewildered By The Surfaces: In The Depths All Becomes Law.
Powerful
Law
Depth
Verses Are Not, As People Think, Feelings (those One Has Early Enough) -- They Are Experiences. For The Sake Of A Verse One Must See Many Cities, Men, And Things, One Must Know The Animals Feel How Birds Fly, And Know The Gesture With Which The Little Flowers Open In The Morning.
Morning
Flower
Animal
Poetic Power Is Great, Strong As A Primitive Instinct; It Has Its Own Unyielding Rhythms In Itself And Breaks Out As Out Of Mountains.
Strong
Mountain
Break Out
May What I Do Flow From Me Like A River, No Forcing And No Holding Back, The Way It Is With Children.
Nature
Children
Integrity
When Anxious, Uneasy And Bad Thoughts Come, I Go To The Sea, And The Sea Drowns Them Out With Its Great Wide Sounds, Cleanses Me With Its Noise, And Imposes A Rhythm Upon Everthing In Me That Is Bewildered And Confused.
Beach
Confused
Ocean
Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.
Needs
Our Love
Terrible
What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.
Fate
Doe
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.
Healing
Yield
Hands
There Is Time Only To Work Slowly There Is No Time Not To Love
Take Your Well-disciplined Strengths, Stretch Them Between The Two Great Opposing Poles, Because Inside Human Beings Is Where God Learns.
Two
Wells
Humans
It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.
Infinity
Beloved
Sooner Or Later
Space For The Spirit To Breathe.
Space
Spirit
Breathe
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
Moving
Animal
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.
Country
Moving
Night
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.
Joy
Dumb
Add
We Make Our Way Through Everything Like Thread Passing Through Fabric, Giving Shape To Images That We Ourselves Do Not Know.
Giving
Fabric
Shapes
True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.
Singing
Different
Breaths
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.
Stars
Fall
Sunset
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.
Air
Breathing
Giving
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.
God
Hope
Thinking
Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror, Which We Are Still Just Able To Endure, And We Are So Awed Because It Serenely Disdains To Annihilate Us.
Able
Endure
Terror
We Have No Reason To Mistrust Our World, For It Is Not Against Us. Has It Terrors, They Are Our Terrors; Has It Abysses, Those Abysses Belong To Us; Are Dangers At Hand, We Must Try To Love Them.... Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave. Perhaps Everything Terrible Is In Its Deepest Being Something Helpless That Wants Help From Us.
Beautiful
Princess
Dragons
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.
Country
Garden
Mirrors
Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer
Answers
Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.
Physical Pleasure Is A Sensual Experience No Different From Pure Seeing Or The Pure Sensation With Which A Fine Fruit Fills The Tongue; It Is A Great Unending Experience, Which Is Given Us, A Knowing Of The World, The Fullness And The Glory Of All Knowing. And Not Our Acceptance Of It Is Bad; The Bad Thing Is That Most People Misuse And Squander This Experience And Apply It As A Stimulant At The Tired Spots Of Their Lives And As Distraction Instead Of A Rallying Toward Exalted Moments.
Tired
Acceptance
Knowing
God Speaks To Each Of Us As He Makes Us, Then Walks With Us Silently Out Of The Night.
Night
Speak
Walks
We Need, In Love, To Practice Only This: Letting Each Other Go. For Holding On Comes Easily; We Do Not Need To Learn It.
Broken Heart
Letting Go
Practice
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.
Real
Preparation
Answers
So This Is Where People Come To Live; I Would Have Thought It Is A City To Die In.
Cities
People
Dies
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.
Trust
Feelings
Growth
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.
Eye
Angel
Night
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.
Dream
Reading
Moving
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.
Real
Power
Giving
Spring Has Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Poems.
Children
Spring
Earth Day
Every Happiness Is The Child Of A Separation It Did Not Think It Could Survive.
Heartbreak
Children
Betrayal
Love Consists In This, That Two Solitudes Protect And Touch And Greet Each Other.
Love
Life
Sexy
As Bees Gather Honey, So We Collect What Is Sweetest Out Of All Things And Build.
Honey
Bees
Construction
There Exists A Creature Which Is Perfectly Harmless; When It Passes Before Your Eyes You Scarcely Notice It And Forget It Again Immediately. But As Soon As It Invisibly Gets Somehow Into Your Ears, It Develops There, It Hatches, As It Were, And Cases Have Been Known Where It Was Penetrated Even Into The Brain And Has Thriven Devastatingly In That Organ, Like Those Pneumococci In Dogs That Gain Entrance Through The Nose.this Creature Is One's Neighbor.
Dog
Eye
Brain
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.
Autumn
Sea
Smell
If, When You Wake Up In The Morning, You Can Think Of Nothing But Writing . . . Then You Are A Writer.
Morning
Writing
Thinking
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.
Art
Spring
Unique
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.
Confused
Responsibility
Men
Be Out Of Sync With Your Times For Just One Day, And You Will See How Much Eternity You Contain Within You.
One Day
Eternity
Sync
If There Is Nothing You Can Share With Other People, Try To Be Close To Things, They Will Not Abandon You; And The Nights Are Still Here And The Winds That Move Through The Trees And Across Many Lands; Everything In The World Of Things And Animals Is Still Filled With Happening, Which You Can Take Part In.
Moving
Animal
Night
I Love The Dark Hours Of My Being. My Mind Deepens Into Them. There I Can Find, As In Old Letters, The Days Of My Life, Already Lived, And Held Like A Legend, And Understood.
Dark
Mind
Letters
There Are No Classes In Life For Beginners; Right Away You Are Always Asked To Deal With What Is Most Difficult.
Inspirational
Life
Success
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.
Children
Solitude
Able
I Live Not In Dreams But In Contemplation Of A Reality That Is Perhaps The Future.
Dream
Reality
Contemplation
And When Suddenly The God Stopped Her And, With Anguish In His Cry, Uttered The Words: ‘he Has Turned Round’ – She Comprehended Nothing And Said Softly: ‘who?
Cry
Said
Anguish
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.
Want
Tests
Innocence
And Now Let Us Believe In A Long Year That Is Given To Us, New, Untouched, Full Of Things That Have Never Been, Full Of Work That Has Never Been Done, Full Of Tasks, Claims, And Demands; And Let Us See That We Learn To Take It Without Letting Fall Too Much Of What It Has To Bestow Upon Those Who Demand Of It Necessary, Serious, And Great Things.
Believe
Fall
Years
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.
Dream
Mood
Intention
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.
Existence
Humans
Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors.
Color
Agility
Painting
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.
Being Alone
Solitude
Reason
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.
Love
Inspirational
Life
Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.
Spiritual
Forever
Dying
Most People Have Turned Their Solutions Toward What Is Easy And Toward The Easiest Side Of The Easy; But It Is Clear That We Must Trust In What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Trusts In It.
Inspirational
People
Alive
The Leaves Are Falling, Falling As If From Far Up,as If Orchards Were Dying High In Space.each Leaf Falls As If It Were Motioning "no."and Tonight The Heavy Earth Is Fallingaway From All Other Stars In The Loneliness.we're All Falling. This Hand Here Is Falling.and Look At The Other One. It's In Them All.and Yet There Is Someone, Whose Handsinfinitely Calm, Holding Up All This Falling.
Stars
Loneliness
Fall
Perhaps Then, Some Day Far In The Future, You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Live Your Way Into The Answer.
Depression
Patience
Mindfulness
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.
Dream
Memories
Humble
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.
Solitude
Trying
Cost
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.
Hard Work
Men
Eternity
You Must Give Birth To Your Images. They Are The Future Waiting To Be Born. Fear Not The Strangeness You Feel. The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens. Just Wait For The Birth, For The The Hour Of The New Clarity.
Long
Giving
Waiting
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
Writing
Heart
Roots
The Work Of The Eyes Is Done. Go Now And Do The Heart-work On The Images Imprisoned Within You.
Eye
Heart
Done
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.
Home
Support
Solitude
Fame Is The Sum Of The Misunderstanding That Gathers About A New Name.
Idols
Names
Fame
Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.
People
Pieces
Shattered
What We Do Battle With Is So Small, What Battles Us Is So Large.
Struggle
Battle
If You Will Stay Close To Nature, To Its Simplicity, To The Small Things Hardly Noticeable, Those Things Can Unexpectedly Become Great And Immeasurable.
Inspiring
Nature
Simplicity
Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.
Love
Patience
Heart
. . . 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.)
Life
Change
Doe
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.
Heart
Looks
Alive
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.
Love
Life
Beauty
Where I Create, There I Am True.
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")
Lonely
Children
Confused
Be Of Good Courage All Is Before You, And Time Passed In The Difficult Is Never Lost...what Is Required Of Us Is That We Live The Difficult And Learn To Deal With It. In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.
Hands
Friendly
Lost
When We Are Only Victorious Over Small Things, It Leaves Us Feeling Small.
Feelings
Small Things
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.
Summer
Spring
Autumn
Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Seperate, In The Evening.
Yesterday
Bird
Evening
Live The Questions Now.
Life
We Are Unutterably Alone Essentially, Especially In The Things Most Intimate And Most Important.
Important
Intimate
In One Creative Thought A Thousand Forgotten Nights Of Love Revive, Filling It With Sublimity And Exaltation.
Night
Creative
Exaltation
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.
Sadness
Joy
Feelings
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.
Horse
Stars
Fall
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.
Memories
Distance
Home
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.
Inspirational
Life
Heart
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.
Strong
Nature
Writing
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.
Life
Determination
Doe
Society Has Been Able To Create Refuges Of Every Sort, For Since It Preferred To Take Love-life As An Amusement, It Also Had To Give It An Easy Form, Cheap, Safe, And Sure, As Public Amusements Are.
Love Life
Giving
Amusement
The Future Enters Into Us, In Order To Transform Itself In Us, Long Before It Happens.
Future
Order
Long
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.
Spiritual
Wine
Flames
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.
Dream
Stars
Reading
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.
Memories
Blood
Waiting
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.
Stars
Waiting
Violin
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.
Spiritual
Flower
Animal
All This Hurrying Soon Will Be Over. Only When We Tarry Do We Touch The Holy.
Patience
Mindfulness
Holy
Irony: Don't Let Yourself Be Controlled By It, Especially During Uncreative Moments.
Irony
Moments
Cynicism
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.
Heart
Winter
Gone
Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.
Music
Piano
Different
Perhaps Somewhere, Someplace Deep Inside Your Being, You Have Undergone Important Changes While You Were Sad.
Important
Deep Inside
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.
Birthday
Men
Littles
To Love Is Good, Too: Love Being Difficult. 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. Love Is A High Inducement To The Individual To Ripen, To Become Something In Himself, To Become World For Himself For Another's Sake, It Is A Great Exacting Claim Upon Him, Something That Chooses Him Out And Calls Him To Vast Things.
Philosophy
Love Is
Preparation
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)
Wine
Wanted
Knows
But There Is Much Beauty Here, Because There Is Much Beauty Everywhere.
Beauty Everywhere
If My Devils Are To Leave Me, I'm Afraid My Angels Will Take Flight As Well.
Angel
Devil
Flight
I Am The Rest Between Two Notes Which Are Somehow Always In Discord.
Two
Notes
Discord
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?
Fear
Force
Stills
There Are Quantities Of Human Beings, But There Are Many More Faces, For Each Person Has Several.
Faces
Humans
Persons
It’s Possible, I’m Moving Through The Hard Veins Of Heavy Mountains, Like An Arc, Alone; I’m So Deep Inside, I See No End In Sight, And No Distance: Everything Is Getting Near And Everything Near Is Turning To Stone.
Distance
Moving
Sight
All Emotions Are Pure Which Gather You And Lift You Up; That Emotion Is Impure Which Seizes Only One Side Of Your Being And So Distorts You.
Emotional
Sides
Lift You Up
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.
Sadness
Order
Noise
So It's Back Once More, Back Up The Slope. Why Do They Always Ruin My Rope With Their Cuts? I Felt So Ready The Other Day, Had A Real Foretaste Of Eternity In My Guts. Spoonfeeding Me Yet Another Sip From Life's Cup. I Don't Want It, Won't Take Any More Of It. Let Me Throw Up. Life Is Medium Rare And Good, I See, And The World Full Of Soup And Bread, But It Won't Pass Into The Blood For Me, Just Goes To My Head. It Makes Me Ill, Though Others It Feeds; Do See That I Must Deny It! For A Thousand Years From Now At Least I'm Keeping A Diet.
Real
Cutting
Blood
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.
Heart
Eye
Fire
Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good.
Hours
Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Criticism.
Art
Criticism
Littles
Strangely, I Heard A Stranger Say, I Am With You.
Stranger
Heard
And Isn't The Whole World Yours? For How Often You Set It On Fire With Your Love And Saw It Blaze And Burn Up And Secretly Replaced It With Another World While Everyone Slept. You Felt In Such Complete Harmony With God, When Every Morning You Asked Him For A New Earth, So That All The Ones He Had Made Could Have Their Turn. You Thought It Would Be Shabby To Save Them And Repair Them; You Used Them Up And Held Out Your Hands, Again And Again, For More World. For Your Love Was Equal To Everything.
Life
Morning
Fire
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.
Sadness
Fate
Patient
Fame, That Public Destruction Of One In Process Of Becoming, Into Whose Building-ground The Mob Breaks, Displacing His Stones.
Stones
Becoming
Fame
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.
Fall
Hands
Forgotten
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.
Attitude
Valleys
May
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.
Mean
Offering
Difficulty
Again And Again In History Some People Wake Up. They Have No Ground In The Crowd And Move To Broader Deeper Laws. They Carry Strange Customs With Them And Demand Room For Bold And Audacious Action. The Future Speaks Ruthlessly Through Them. They Change The World.
Moving
Law
People
I Would Like To Step Out Of My Heart And Go Walking Beneath The Enormous Sky.
Heart
Sky
Steps
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.
Flower
Sleep
Long
Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen. Otherwise It Will Be Too Easy For You To Look With Blame... At Your Past, Which Naturally Has A Share With Everything That Now Meets You.
Change
Past
Looks
Nearly Everything That Matters Is A Challenge, And Everything Matters.
Challenges
Matter
Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism.
Knowing
Doubt
Criticism
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.
Angel
Able
Endure
Life Is Cut To Allow For Growth ... One May Vigorously Put On Weight Before One Fills It Out Entirely.
Cutting
Growth
Weight
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.
Clouds
Glasses
Sky
May You Find In Yourself Enough Patience To Endure And Enough Simplicity To Have Faith.
Faith
Simplicity
May
All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.
Blood
Mind
Of My Mind
Fame — The Aggregate Of All The Misunderstandings That Collect Around A New Name.
Names
Fame
Miscellaneous
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.
Struggle
Identity
Cost
I Am Touched By Your Beautiful Anxiety About Life.
Beautiful
Worry
Anxiety
Somewhere There Is An Ancient Enmity Between Our Daily Life And The Great Work. Help Me In Saying It, To Understand It.
Enmity
Helping
Daily Life
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.
Stars
Night
Spinning
Life + A Cat ... Adds Up To An Incalculable Sum.
Cat
Add
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.
Mean
Sick
Mind
A Person Isn't Who They Are During The Last Conversation You Had With Them - They're Who They've Been Throughout Your Whole Relationship.
Relationship
Sad Love
Family Love
If Your Daily Life Seems Poor, Do Not Blame It; Blame Yourself That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Forth Its Riches; For The Creator, There Is No Poverty.
Riches
Poverty
Blame
And Now We Welcome The New Year, Full Of Things That Have Never Been
New Year
Nature
New Beginnings
No One Can Advise And Help You, No One. There Is Only One Way: Go Within.
Way
Helping
Existentialism
Look: The Trees Exist; The Houses We Dwell In Stand There Stalwartly. Only We Pass By It All, Like A Rush Of Air. And Everything Conspires To Keep Quiet About Us, Half Out Of Shame Perhaps, Half Out Of Some Secret Hope.
Air
House
Tree
Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.
Weight
Life Is
All Things
Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is In The Right, Always.
Life
Believe
Let Me
Deeply I Go Down Into Myself. My God Is Dark And Like A Webbing Made Of A Hundred Roots That Drink In Silence.
God
Dark
Roots
You Must Change Your Life.
Changing Your Life
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.
Spring
Rain
Fall
I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone Enough
World
Enough
This World
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. . .
Sky
Rivers
Broken
May You Gain More And More Confidence In What Is Difficult And In Your Solitude Among Other People.
Confidence
People
Solitude
All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.
Demand
Filled
Profession
Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.
Life
Glorious
Across The Moment, Aeons Speak With Aeons. More Than We Experienced Has Gone By.
Gone
Speak
Moments
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.
Believe
Simplicity
Solitude
What Is Happening On Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love.
Self
Worthy
Happenings
Perhaps Creating Something Is Nothing But An Act Of Profound Remembrance.
Creating
Profound
Remembrance
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?
Past
Soul
Enough
Live Your Questions Now, And Perhaps Even Without Knowing It, You Will Live Along Some Distant Day Into Your Answers.
Life
Knowing
Answers
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.
Eye
Animal
World
No Great Art Has Ever Been Made Without The Artist Having Known Danger.
Art
Danger
Made
I Believe That Nothing That Is Real Can Pass Away.
Real
Believe
Passing Away
The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens.
Long
Happens
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.
Saws
Faults
Claims
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.
Hands
Knowing
Way
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.
Progress
Development
Opinion
[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.
Order
Important
Able
Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.
Art
Loneliness
Infinite
Draw Near To Nature. Then Try Like Some First Human Being To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.
Trying
And Love
Firsts
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?
Grief
Sleep
Over You
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.
Pain
Solitude
Trying
I Hold This To Be The Highest Task For A Bond Between Two People: That Each Protects The Solitude Of The Other.
Friendship
Relationship
Marriage
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.
Waiting
Over You
Physicians
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.
Real
Mirrors
Eyebrows
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