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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.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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Leave To Your Opinions

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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.

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May I Strike My Heart's Keys Clearly, And May None Fail Because Of Slack, Uncertain, Or Fraying Strings. May The Tears That Stream Down My Face Make Me More Radiant: May My Hidden Weeping Bloom.... How We Waste Our Afflictions!... [t]hey're Really Our Wintering Foliage, Our Dark Greens Of Meaning, One Of The Seasons Of The Clandestine Year—; Not Only A Season—: They're Site, Settlement, Shelter, Soil, Abode.

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

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

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

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

Our Heart Always Transcends Us.

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.

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

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

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.

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

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.

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

A Billion Stars Go Spinning Through The Night, / Glittering Above Your Head, / But In You Is The Presence That Will Be / When All The Stars Are Dead.

I Implore Those Who Love Me To Love My Solitude.

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

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.

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.

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

Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.

Now For Some Heartwork.

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

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

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.

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.

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

There Is Only One Solitude, And It Is Vast, Heavy, Difficult To Bear, And Almost Everyone Has Hours When He Would Gladly Exchange It For Any Kind Of Sociability, However Trivial Or Cheap, For The Tiniest Outward Agreement With The First Person Who Comes Along.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

All Things Want To Float.

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.

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

So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

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.

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.

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

Avoid Providing Material For The Drama That Is Always Stretched Tight Between Parents And Children; It Uses Up Much Of The Children’s Strength And Wastes The Love Of The Elders, Which Acts And Warms Even If It Doesn’t Comprehend. Don’t Ask For Advice From Them And Don’t Expect Any Understanding; But Believe In A Love That Is Being Stored Up For You Like An Inheritance, And Have Faith That In This Love There Is Strength And Blessing So Large That You Can Travel As Far As You Wish Without Having To Step Outside It.

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

To Be Here Is Immense.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

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.

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.

To Work Is To Live Without Dying.

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.

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

In The Depths All Becomes Law.

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.

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.

Surely All Art Is The Result Of One's Having Been In Danger, Of Having Gone Through An Experience All The Way To The End, Where No One Can Go Any Further.

Children Are Still The Way You Were As A Child, Sad And Happy In Just The Same Way-and If You Think Of Your Childhood, You Once Again Live Among Them, Among The Solitary Children.

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

More Belongs To Marriage Than Four Legs In A Bed.

May What I Do Flow From Me Like A River, No Forcing And No Holding Back, The Way It Is With Children.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Everything In The World Of Things And Animals Is Still Filled With Happening, Which You Can Take Part In.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.

Sooner Or Later

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

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.

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.

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.

Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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?

But There Is Much Beauty Here, Because There Is Much Beauty Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

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.

The Only Journey Is The One Within.

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

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

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

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

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

You Must Change Your Life.

Changing Your Life

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

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

Our Being Is Continually Undergoing And Entering Upon Changes. ... We Must, Strictly Speaking, At Every Moment Give Each Other Up And Let Each Other Go And Not Hold Each Other Back.

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

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

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

I Live My Life In Widening Circles That Reach Out Across The World.

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.

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.

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

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

Live The Questions Now.

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.

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.

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

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.

Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Cannot Yet Know Love: They Have To Learn It.

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.

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)?

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.

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

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.

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. . .

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

What Else Can I Tell You? It Seems To Me That Everything Has Its Proper Emphasis; And Finally I Want To Add Just One More Bit Of Advice: To Keep Growing, Silently And Earnestly, Through Your Whole Development; You Couldn't Disturb It Any More Violently Than By Looking Outside And Waiting For Outside Answers To Questions That Only Your Innermost Feeling, In Your Quietest Hour, Can Perhaps Answer.

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

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.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens.

I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken.

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.

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.

I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone Enough

Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?

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

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

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.

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.

Beauty Is Only The Start Of Bearable Terror.

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

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.

Music: Breathing Of Statues. Perhaps: Silence Of Paintings. You Language Where All Language Ends. You Time Standing Vertically On The Motion Of Mortal Hearts.

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.

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

This Is In The End The Only Kind Of Courage That Is Required Of Us: The Courage To Face The Strangest, Most Unusual, Most Inexplicable Experiences That Can Meet Us.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Why Should You Want To Give Up A Child's Wise Not-understanding In Exchange For Defensiveness And Scorn, Since Not-understanding Is, After All, A Way Of Being Alone, Whereas Defensiveness And Scorn Are A Participation In Precisely What, By These Means, You Want To Separate Yourself From.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Would Like To Sing Someone To Sleep, To Sit Beside Someone And Be There. I Would Like To Rock You And Sing Softly And Go With You To And From Sleep. I Would Like To Be The One In The House Who Knew: The Night Was Cold. And I Would Like To Listen In And Listen Out Into You, Into The World, Into The Woods. The Clocks Shout To One Another Striking, And One Sees To The Bottom Of Time. And Down Below One Last, Strange Man Walks By And Rouses A Strange Dog. And After That Comes Silence. I Have Laid My Eyes Upon You Wide; And They Hold You Gently And Let You Go When Something Stirs In The Dark.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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