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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.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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If There Is Anything

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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.

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

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

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Prayed To Rediscover My Childhood, And It Has Come Back, And I Feel That It Is Just As Difficult As It Used To Be, And That Growing Older Has Served No Purpose At All.

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.

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.

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

And Now We Welcome The New Year, Full Of Things That Have Never Been

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Criticism.

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Love You More

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

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.

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.

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

Keep Growing Quietly And Seriously Throughout Your Whole Development; You Cannot Disturb It More Rudely Than By Looking Outward And Expecting From Outside Replies To Questions That Only Your Inmost Feeling In Your Most Hushed Hour Can Perhaps Answer.

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.

Why Don't You Conceive Of God As An Ally Who Is Coming, Who Has Been Approaching Since Time Began, The One Who Will Someday Arrive, The Fruit Of A Tree Whose Leaves We Are? Why Not Project His Birth Into The Future, And Live Your Life As An Excruciating And Lyrical Moment In The History Of A Prodigious Pregnancy?

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.

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

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.

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

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

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

Fame Is Finally Only The Sum Total Of All The Misunderstanding That Can Gather Around A New Name.

Misunderstanding

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.

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

Just Keep Going - No Feeling Is Final.

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

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

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. . .

Spring Has Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Poems.

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.

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.

And Even If You Were In Some Prison, The Walls Of Which Let None Of The Sounds Of The World Come To Your Senses - Would You Not Then Still Have Your Childhood, That Precious, Kingly Possession, That Treasure-house Of Memories?

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.

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

You 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.

So This Is Where People Come To Live; I Would Have Thought It Is A City To Die In.

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

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.

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

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.

Who Is There Today Who Still Cares About A Well-finished Death? No One. Even The Rich, Who Could After All Afford This Luxury, Are Beginning To Grow Lazy And Indifferent; The Desire To Have A Death Of One's Own Is Becoming More And More Rare. In A Short Time It Will Be As Rare As A Life Of One's Own.

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.

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.

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

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.

Take Your Well-disciplined Strengths, Stretch Them Between The Two Great Opposing Poles, Because Inside Human Beings Is Where God Learns.

If No One Else, The Dying Must Notice How Unreal, How Full Of Pretense, Is All That We Accomplish Here, Where Nothing Is Allowed To Be Itself.

Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism.

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

Our Heart Always Transcends Us.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Could Give You No Advice But This: To Go Into Yourself And To Explore The Depths Where Your Life Wells Forth.

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.

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

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

The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

When We Are Only Victorious Over Small Things, It Leaves Us Feeling Small.

God... Sat Down For A Moment When The Dog Was Finished In Order To Watch It... And To Know That It Was Good, That Nothing Was Lacking, That It Could Not Have Been Made Better.

Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.

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

I Am Learning To See. I Don't Know Why It Is, But Everything Enters Me More Deeply And Doesn't Stop Where It Once Used To. I Have An Interior That I Never Knew Of... What's The Use Of Telling Someone That I Am Changing? If I'm Changing, I Am No Longer Who I Was; And If I Am Something Else, It's Obvious That I Have No Acquaintances. And I Can't Possibly Write To Strangers.

The Only Journey Is The One Within.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

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

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?

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.

You Must Give Birth To Your Images. They Are The Future Waiting To Be Born.

Everything Is Gestation And Then Birthing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

Fame, That Public Destruction Of One In Process Of Becoming, Into Whose Building-ground The Mob Breaks, Displacing His Stones.

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

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

My Loving Friend, You See, My Life Was Never Given A Foundation, No One Was Able To Imagine What It Would Want To Become. In Venice There Stands The So-called Ca Del Duca, A Princely Foundation, On Which Later The Most Wretched Tenement Came To Be Built. With Me It's The Opposite: The Beautiful Arched Elevations Of My Spirit Rest On The Most Tentative Beginning; A Wooden Scaffolding, A Few Boards....is That Why I Feel Inhibited In Raising The Nave, The Tower To Which The Weight Of The Great Bells Is To Be Hoisted (by Angels, Who Else Could Do It)?

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

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.

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

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

Who, If I Cried Out, Would Hear Me Among The Angels'hierarchies? And Even If One Of Thempressed Me Against His Heart: I Would Be Consumedin That Overwhelming Existence. For Beauty Is Nothingbut The Beginning Of Terror, Which We Still Are Just Able To Endure,and We Are So Awed Because It Serenely Disdainsto Annihilate Us. Every Angel Is Terrifying.

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart And Try To Love The Questions Themselves, Like Locked Rooms And Like Books That Are Now Written In A Very Foreign Tongue. Do Not Now Seek The Answers, Which Cannot Be Given You Because You Would Not Be Able To Live Them. And The Point Is, To Live Everything. Live The Questions Now. Perhaps You Will Then Gradually, Without Noticing It, Live Along Some Distant Day Into The Answer.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Nearly Everything That Matters Is A Challenge, And Everything Matters.

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

Every Angel Is Terrifying.

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.

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.

Only Those Sadnesses Are Dangerous And Bad Which One Carries About Among People In Order To Drown Them Out.

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

Who Speaks Of Conquering? To Endure Is Everything.

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.

There Is Only One Journey. Going Inside Yourself.

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.

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.

To Work Is To Live Without Dying.

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.

No Great Art Has Ever Been Made Without The Artist Having Known Danger.

Love Consists In This, That Two Solitudes Protect And Touch And Greet Each Other.

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?

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.

Do Continue To Believe That With Your Feeling And With Your Work You Are Taking Part In The Greatest; The More Strongly You Cultivate In Yourself This Belief, The More Will Reality And World Go Forth From It.

Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.

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.

I Am Like A Child Who Awakes At The Light, So Safe And Securefree From Night's Fears When Dawn Breaks, In Thee I Am Ever Secure.

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.

Now I Come To You Full Of Future. And From Habit We Begin To Live Our Past.

Space For The Spirit To Breathe.

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.

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.

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.

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

To Be Here Is Immense.

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.

Think... Of The World You Carry Within You.

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!

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

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

So You Mustn't Be Frightened, Dear Mr. Kappus, If A Sadness Rises In Front Of You, Larger Than Any You Have Ever Seen; If An Anxiety - Like Light And Cloud-shadows, Moves Over Your Hands And Everything You Do. You Must Realize That Something Is Happening To You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In The Palm Of Its Hand And Will Not Let You Fall.

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.

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

What We Fight With Is So Small, And When We Win, It Makes Us Small. What We Want Is To Be Defeated, Decisively, By Successively Greater Things

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

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

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.

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

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