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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.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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Perhaps All The Dragons

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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.

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

There Would Have To Be Bread, Some Rich, Whole-grain Bread And Zwieback, And Perhaps On A Long, Narrow Dish Some Pale Westphalian Ham Laced With Strips Of White Fat Like An Evening Sky With Bands Of Clouds. There Would Be Some Tea Ready To Be Drunk, Yellowish Golden Tea In Glasses With Silver Saucers, Giving Off A Faint Fragrance.

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.

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!

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.

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.

The Flower Bends When The Wind Wants It To, And You Must Become Like That-that Is, Filled With Deep #‎ Trust .

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

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?

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

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

Beauty Everywhere

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.

I Don’t Want To Stand Before You Like A Thing, Shrewd, Secretive. I Want My Own Will, And I Want Simply To Be With My Will, As It Goes Toward Action. And In The Silent, Sometimes Hardly Moving Times, When Something Is Coming Near, I Want To Be With Those Who Know Secret Things Or Else Alone. I Want To Unfold. I Don’t Want To Be Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.

In The Depths All Becomes Law.

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.

Be Ahead Of All Parting, As Though It Already Were Behind You.

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

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.

Look, Lovers: Almost Separately They Come Towards Us Through The Flowery Grass And Slowly; Parting's So Far From Thought Of, They Indulge The Extravagance Of Walking Unembraced.

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

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.

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.

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.

With Poems One Accomplishes So Little When One Writes Them Early. One Should Hold Off And Gather Sense And Sweetness A Whole Life Long, A Long Life If Possible, And Then, Right At The End, One Could Perhaps Write Ten Lines That Are Good.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Where I Create, There I Am True.

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

He Who Does Not At Some Time, With Definite Determination Consent To The Terribleness Of Life, Or Even Exalt In It, Never Takes Possession Of The Inexpressible Fullness Of The Power Of Our Existence.

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.

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.

In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.

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

So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whoever Has No House Now, Will Never Have One. Whoever Is Alone Will Stay Alone, Will Sit, Read, Write Long Letters Through The Evening, And Wander On The Boulevards, Up And Down, Restlessly, While Dry Leaves Are Blowing.

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.

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

You See, I Want A Lot. Perhaps I Want Everything The Darkness That Comes With Every Infinite Fall And The Shivering Blaze Of Every Step Up. So Many Live On And Want Nothing And Are Raised To The Rank Of Prince By The Slippery Ease Of Their Light Judgments But What You Love To See Are Faces That Do Work And Feel Thirst. You Love Most Of All Those Who Need You As They Need A Crowbar Or A Hoe. You Have Not Grown Old, And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out Its Own Secret.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

We Are Continually Overflowing Toward Those Who Preceded Us, Toward Our Origin, And Toward Those Who Seemingly Come After Us. ... It Is Our Task To Imprint This Temporary, Perishable Earth Into Ourselves So Deeply, So Painfully And Passionately, That Its Essence Can Rise Again “invisibly,” Inside Us. We Are The Bees Of The Invisible. We Wildly Collect The Honey Of The Visible, To Store It In The Great Golden Hive Of The Invisible.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

To Work Is To Live Without Dying.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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")

Just Keep Going - No Feeling Is Final.

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

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

I 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.

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

Shattered People Are Best Represented By Bits And Pieces.

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

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.

Deeply I Go Down Into Myself. My God Is Dark And Like A Webbing Made Of A Hundred Roots That Drink In Silence.

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.

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.

Every Happiness Is The Child Of A Separation It Did Not Think It Could 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.

I Believe That Nothing That Is Real Can Pass Away.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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 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.

Love Is Something Difficult And It Is More Difficult Than Other Things Because In Other Conflicts Nature Herself Enjoins Men To Collect Themselves, To Take Themselves Firmly In The Hand With All Their Strength, While In The Heightening Of Love The Impulse Is To Give Oneself Wholly Away.

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

All Companionship Can Consist In Only The Strengthening Of Neighboring Solitudes, Giving Oneself Is By Nature Harmful To Companionship: For When A Person Abandons Himself, He Is No Longer Anything, And When Two People Both Give Themselves Up In Order To Become Closer To Each Other, There Is No Longer Any Ground Beneath Them And Their Being Together Is A Continual Falling – I Have Learned Over And Over Again, There Is Scarcely Anything More Difficult Than To Love One Another.

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.

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.

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.

In One Creative Thought A Thousand Forgotten Nights Of Love Revive, Filling It With Sublimity And Exaltation.

Our Heart Always Transcends Us.

Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.

Be, In This Immensity Of Night, The Magic Force At Your Sense's Crossroad.

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

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

She Followed Slowly, Taking A Long Time, As Though There Were Some Obstacles In The Way; And Yet: As Though, Once It Was Overcome, She Would Be Beyond All Walking, And Would Fly.

Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave.

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 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.

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

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

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

The Point Is To Live Everything.

Life Is Cut To Allow For Growth ... One May Vigorously Put On Weight Before One Fills It Out Entirely.

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

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

Misunderstanding

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. . .

Everything That Makes More Of You Than You Have Ever Been, Even In Your Best Hours, Is Right. Every Intensification Is Good.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

There Are Quantities Of Human Beings, But There Are Many More Faces, For Each Person Has Several.

Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.

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.

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

Life - A Sexually Transmitted Terminal Condition.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

We Must Assume Our Existence As Broadly As We In Any Way Can; Everything, Even The Unheard - Of, Must Be Possible In It. This Is At Bottom The Only Courage That Is Demanded Of Us: To Have Courage For The Most Strange, The Most Inexplicable.

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

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors, And One Has To Leave Them Alone Completely, So That They Can Settle The Matter Among Themselves. Their Intercourse: This Is The Whole Of Painting. Whoever Meddles, Arranges, Injects His Human Deliberation, His Wit, His Advocacy, His Intellectual Agility In Any Way, Is Already Disturbing And Clouding Their Activity.

I Live My Life In Widening Circle That Reach Out Across The World. I May Not Ever Complete The Last One, But I Give Myself To It. I Circle Around God, That Primordial Tower. I Have Been Circling For Thousands Of Years, And I Still Don't Know: Am I A Falcon, A Storm, Or A Great Song? [i, 2]

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 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.

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.

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?

The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You Have Had Many And Great Sadnesses, Which Passed. And You Say That Even This Passing Was Hard For You And Put You Out Of Sorts. But, Please, Consider Whether These Great Sadnesses Have Not Rather Gone Right Through The Center Of Yourself? Whether Much In You Has Not Altered, Whether You Have Not Somewhere, At Some Point Of Your Being, Undergone A Change When You Were Sad?

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

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

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.

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.

[a]t Bottom, And Just In The Deepest And Most Important Things, We Are Unutterably Alone, And For One Person To Be Able To Advise Or Even Help Another, A Lot Must Happen, A Lot Must Go Well, A Whole Constellation Of Things Must Come Right In Order Once To Succeed.

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.

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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.

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.

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

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

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.

A Kind Of Memory That Tells Us That What We're Now Striving For Was Once Nearer And Truer And Attached To Us With Infinite Tenderness. Here All Is Distance, There It Was Breath. After The First Home The Second One Seems Draughty And Strangely Sexed.

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.

It Is A Tremendous Act Of Violence To Begin Anything. I Am Not Able To Begin. I Simply Skip What Should Be The Beginning.

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

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.

Whoever You Are, Go Out Into The Evening, Leaving Your Room, Of Which You Know Every Bit; Your House Is The Last Before The Infinite, Whoever You Are.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Work Of The Eyes Is Done. Go Now And Do The Heart-work On The Images Imprisoned Within You.

A Good Marriage Is That In Which Each Appoints The Other Guardian Of His Solitude

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.

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

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

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.

I Implore Those Who Love Me To Love My Solitude.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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