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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!

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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In This There Is

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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!

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

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.

If, When You Wake Up In The Morning, You Can Think Of Nothing But Writing . . . Then You Are A Writer.

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.

If You Will Cling To Nature, To The Simple In Nature, To The Little Things That Hardly Anyone Sees, And That Can So Unexpectedly Become Big And Beyond Measuring; If You Have This Love Of Inconsiderable Things And Seek Quite Simply, As One Who Serves, To Win The Confidence Of What Seems Poor: Then Everything Will Become Easier, More Coherent And Somehow More Conciliatory For You, Not In Your Intellect, Perhaps, Which Lags Marveling Behind, But In Your Inmost Consciousness, Waking And Cognizance.

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

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.

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

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

All Feelings That Concentrate You And Lift You Up Are Pure; Only That Feeling Is Impure Which Grasps Just One Side Of Your Being And Thus Distorts You. Everything You Can Think Of As You Face Your Childhood, Is Good. Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good, If It Is In Your Entire Blood, If It Isn't Intoxication Or Muddiness, But Joy Which You Can See Into, Clear To The Bottom.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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")

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Falling In Love

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.

There Is Only One Journey. Going Inside Yourself.

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.

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.

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

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

All Things Want To Float.

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.

There Are No Classes In Life For Beginners; Right Away You Are Always Asked To Deal With What Is Most Difficult.

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.

Trees Do Not Force Their Sap, Nor Does The Flower Push Its Bloom.

Never Believe Fate Is More Than The Condensation Of Childhood.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Where Something Becomes Extremely Difficult And Unbearable, There We Also Stand Always Already Quite Near Its Transformation.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

More Belongs To Marriage Than Four Legs In A Bed.

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

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.

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

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.

The Point Is To Live Everything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

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

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.

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

To Work Is To Live Without Dying.

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.

Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.

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.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Draw Near To Nature. Then Try Like Some First Human Being To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In The Depths All Becomes Law.

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

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

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

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

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

Do Not Assume That He Who Seeks To Comfort You Now, Lives Untroubled Among The Simple And Quiet Words That Sometimes Do You Good. His Life May Also Have Much Sadness And Difficulty, That Remains Far Beyond Yours. Were It Otherwise, He Would Never Have Been Able To Find These Words.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Am So Glad You Are Here. It Helps Me Realize How Beautiful My World Is.

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

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.

Space For The Spirit To Breathe.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Life - A Sexually Transmitted Terminal Condition.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

The Most Visible Joy Can Only Reveal Itself To Us When We've Transformed It, Within.

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.

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

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.

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.

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

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

Do You Remember How Life Yearned Out Of Childhood Toward The "great Thing?" I See That It Is Now Yearning Forth Beyond The Great Thing Toward The Greater One.

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

Across The Moment, Aeons Speak With Aeons. More Than We Experienced Has Gone By.

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.

Those Tasks That Have Been Entrusted To Us Are Difficult; Almost Everything Serious Is Difficult; And Everything Is Serious.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Only The Individual Who Is Solitary Is Like A Thing Placed Under Profound Laws, And When He Goes Out Into The Morning That Is Just Beginning, Or Looks Out Into The Evening That Is Full Of Happening, And If He Feels What Is Going On There, Then All Status Drops From Him As From A Dead Man, Though He Stands In The Midst Of Sheer Life.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

We 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.

Art Too Is Just A Way Of Living, And However One Lives, One Can, Without Knowing, Prepare For It; In Everything Real One Is Closer To It, More Its Neighbor, Than In The Unreal Half-artistic Professions, Which, While They Pretend To Be Close To Art, In Practice Deny And Attack The Existence Of All Art - As, For Example, All Of Journalism Does And Almost All Criticism And Three Quarters Of What Is Called (and Wants To Be Called) Literature.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors.

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.

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.

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

Swells, Marina? We Ocean, Depths, Marina? We Sky!

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.

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.

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.

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.

To Be Here Is Immense.

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

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

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

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

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.

If You Trust In Nature, In The Small Things That Hardly Anyone Sees And That Can So Suddenly Become Huge, Immeasurable; If You Have This Love For What Is Humble And Try Very Simply, As Someone Who Serves, To Win The Confidence Of What Seems Poor, Then Everything Will Become Easier For You.

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

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

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!

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