Background Image
...
What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

What We Call Fate

Rainer Maria Rilke
...
What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.

Understanding the Quote: "what we call fate does not come into us from the outside,..."

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

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

Lessons From the Quote

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

About Rainer Maria Rilke

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

Actionable Takeaways

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

Closing Thoughts

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

Views: 7
Topic
Fate
Doe
More From Rainer Maria Rilke
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.
Life
Fate
Should Have
What Is Necessary, After All, Is Only This: Solitude, Vast Inner Solitude. To Walk Inside Yourself And Meet No One For Hours-that Is What You Must Be Able To Attain. To Be Solitary As You Were When You Were A Child.
Children
Solitude
Able
I 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.
Dog
Sleep
Eye
The Sky Puts On The Darkening Blue Coat Held For It By A Row Of Ancient Trees; You Watch: And The Lands Grow Distant In Your Sight, One Journeying To Heaven, One That Falls; And Leave You, Not At Home In Either One, Not Quite So Still And Dark As The Darkened Houses, Not Calling To Eternity With The Passion Of What Becomes A Star Each Night, And Rises; And Leave You (inexpressibly To Unravel) Your Life, With Its Immensity And Fear, So That, Now Bounded, Now Immeasurable It Is Alternately Stone In You And Star.
Stars
Fall
Sunset
For Poems Are Not, As People Think, Simply Emotions (one Has Emotions Early Enough)-they Are Experiences.
Thinking
People
Emotion
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.
Reading
Eye
Blood
Always Trust Yourself And Your Own Feelings, As Opposed To Arguments And Discussions. If It Turns Out That You Are Wrong, Then The Natural Growth Of Your Inner Life Will Eventually Guide You To Other Insights.
Trust
Feelings
Growth
I Live Not In Dreams But In Contemplation Of A Reality That Is Perhaps The Future.
Dream
Reality
Contemplation
Be Patient Toward All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart.
Love
Patience
Heart
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.
Long
Solitude
Life Is
The Highest Form Of Love Is To Be The Protector Of Another Person’s Solitude.
Love
Solitude
Introvert
Animals See The Unobstructed World With Their Whole Eyes. But Our Eyes, Turned Back Upon Themselves, Encircle And Seek To Snare The World, Setting Traps For Freedom.
Eye
Animal
World
Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.
Life
Glorious
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.
Arrows
Sorrow
Abiding
But There Is Much Beauty Here, Because There Is Much Beauty Everywhere.
Beauty Everywhere
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.
Writing
Ambition
Blood
It Seems To Me That The Only Way One Can Be Helpful Is To Extend One's Hand To Someone Else Involuntarily, And Without Ever Knowing How Useful This Will Be.
Hands
Knowing
Way
Irony: Don't Let Yourself Be Controlled By It, Especially During Uncreative Moments.
Irony
Moments
Cynicism
You Who Let Yourselves Feel: Enter The Breathing That Is More Than Your Own. Let It Brush Your Cheeks As It Divides And Rejoins Behind You. The Trees You Planted In Childhood Have Grown Too Heavy. You Cannot Bring Them Along. Give Yourselves To The Air, To What You Cannot Hold.
Air
Breathing
Giving
Yield Not Thy Neck To Fortune's Yoke, But Let Thy Dauntless Mind Still Ride In Triumph Over All Mischance. In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.
Healing
Yield
Hands
Why Don't You Think Of [god] As The One Who Is Coming, Who Has Been Approaching From All Eternity... The Ultimate Fruit Of A Tree Whose Leaves We Are.
God
Hope
Thinking
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.
People
Way
Easy
All Companionship Can Consist In Only The Strengthening Of Neighboring Solitudes, Giving Oneself Is By Nature Harmful To Companionship: For When A Person Abandons Himself, He Is No Longer Anything, And When Two People Both Give Themselves Up In Order To Become Closer To Each Other, There Is No Longer Any Ground Beneath Them And Their Being Together Is A Continual Falling – I Have Learned Over And Over Again, There Is Scarcely Anything More Difficult Than To Love One Another.
Fall
Order
Two
You, Beloved, Who Are All The Gardens I Have Ever Gazed At, Longing. An Open Window In A Country House - , And You Almost Stepped Out, Pensive, To Meet Me. Streets That I Chanced Upon, - You Had Just Walked Down Them And Vanished. And Sometimes, In A Shop, The Mirrors Were Still Dizzy With Your Presence And, Startled, Gave Back My Too-sudden Image. Who Knows? Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Separate, In The Evening.
Country
Garden
Mirrors
Quiet Friend Who Has Come So Far, Feel How Your Breathing Makes More Space Around You. Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower And You The Bell. As You Ring, What Batters You Becomes Your Strength. Move Back And Forth Into The Change. What Is It Like, Such Intensity Of Pain? If The Drink Is Bitter, Turn Yourself To Wine. In This Uncontainable Night, Be The Mystery At The Crossroads Of Your Senses, The Meaning Discovered There. And If The World Has Ceased To Hear You, Say To The Silent Earth: I Flow. To The Rushing Water, Speak: I Am.
Pain
Moving
Wine
We Make Our Way Through Everything Like Thread Passing Through Fabric, Giving Shape To Images That We Ourselves Do Not Know.
Giving
Fabric
Shapes
A Work Of Art Is Good If It Has Arisen Out Of Necessity. That Is The Only Way One Can Judge It.
Art
Judging
Creative
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.
Nature
Winning
Simple
Do Not Be Bewildered By The Surfaces: In The Depths All Becomes Law.
Powerful
Law
Depth
We Are Unutterably Alone Essentially, Especially In The Things Most Intimate And Most Important.
Important
Intimate
Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper And Walks Outdoors, And Keeps On Walking, Because Of A Church That Stands Somewhere In The East. And His Children Say Blessings On Him As If He Were Dead. And Another Man, Who Remains Inside His Own House, Stays There, Inside The Dishes And In The Glasses, So That His Children Have To Go Far Out Into The World Toward That Same Church, Which He Forgot.
Children
Blessing
Men
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.
Friendship
Emo
Sadness
Those Doves Below, The Ones Utterly Cared For, Never Endangered Ones, Cannot Know Tenderness.
Dove
Knows
Tenderness
As The Arrow Endures The String, And In The Gathering Momentum Becomes More Than Itself. Because To Stay Is To Be Nowhere.
Arrows
Gathering
Momentum
I Would Like To Step Out Of My Heart And Go Walking Beneath The Enormous Sky.
Heart
Sky
Steps
The Only Journey Is The One Within.
Life
Beautiful
Journey
May What I Do Flow From Me Like A River, No Forcing And No Holding Back, The Way It Is With Children.
Nature
Children
Integrity
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.
Song
Joy
Forever
When Anxious, Uneasy And Bad Thoughts Come, I Go To The Sea, And The Sea Drowns Them Out With Its Great Wide Sounds, Cleanses Me With Its Noise, And Imposes A Rhythm Upon Everthing In Me That Is Bewildered And Confused.
Beach
Confused
Ocean
I Believe That Nothing That Is Real Can Pass Away.
Real
Believe
Passing Away
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.
Fall
Wind
Knowing
Make Your Ego Porous. Will Is Of Little Importance, Complaining Is Nothing, Fame Is Nothing. Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.
Patience
Ego
Solitude
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.
Eye
Sky
Silence
Perhaps The Same Bird Echoed Through Both Of Us Yesterday, Seperate, In The Evening.
Yesterday
Bird
Evening
Young People, Who Are Beginners In Everything, Cannot Yet Know Love: They Have To Learn It.
People
Beginners
Young
For Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror Which We Are Barely Able To Endure, And It Amazes Us So, Because It Serenely Disdains To Destroy Us. Every Angel Is Terrible.
Angel
Able
Endure
To All That Is Used-up, And To All The Muffled And Dumb Creatures In The World's Full Reserve, The Unsayable Sums, Joyfully Add Yourself, And Cancel The Count.
Joy
Dumb
Add
To Have A Childhood Means To Live A Thousand Lives Before The One.
Mean
Childhood
Thousand
If Your Daily Life Seems Poor, Do Not Blame It; Blame Yourself That You Are Not Poet Enough To Call Forth Its Riches; For The Creator, There Is No Poverty.
Riches
Poverty
Blame
Our Heart Always Transcends Us.
Heart
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.
Girl
Mean
Reality
Earth, My Dearest, Oh Believe Me, You No Longer Need Your Springtimes To Win Me Over...unspeakably, I Have Belonged To You, From The Flush.
Believe
Winning
Needs
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.
People
Cost
Alive
I Live My Life In Widening Circle That Reach Out Across The World. I May Not Ever Complete The Last One, But I Give Myself To It. I Circle Around God, That Primordial Tower. I Have Been Circling For Thousands Of Years, And I Still Don't Know: Am I A Falcon, A Storm, Or A Great Song? [i, 2]
Song
Circles
Years
Stand Up During Supper And Walk Outdoors, And Keep On Walking.
Walks
Supper
Walking
Winning Does Not Tempt That Man. This Is How He Grows: By Being Defeated, Decisively, By Constantly Greater Beings.
Success
Winning
Men
This Above All-ask Yourself In The Stillest Hour Of Your Night: Must I Write? Delve Into Yourself For A Deep Answer. And If This Should Be Affirmative, If You May Meet This Earnest Question With A Strong And Simple "i Must," Then Build Your Life According To This Necessity; Your Life Even Into Its Most Indifferent And Slightest Hour Must Be A Sign Of This Urge And A Testimony To It. Then Draw Near To Nature. Then Try, Like Some First Human Being, To Say What You See And Experience And Love And Lose.
Strong
Nature
Writing
In The Night, I Wish To Speak With The Angel To Find Out If She Recognizes My Eyes, If She Will Ask Me: Do You See Eden? And I’ll Reply: Eden Burns.
Eye
Angel
Night
Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave.
Beautiful
Princess
Adversity
Not Since Moses Has Anyone Seen A Mountain So Greatly.
Mountain
Moses
A Person Isn't Who They Are During The Last Conversation You Had With Them - They're Who They've Been Throughout Your Whole Relationship.
Relationship
Sad Love
Family Love
I Am Too Alone In The World And Not Alone Enough To Make Every Moment Holy.
World
Moments
Enough
Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.
Music
Piano
Different
At No Other Time (than Autumn) Does The Earth Let Itself Be Inhaled In One Smell, The Ripe Earth; In A Smell That Is In No Way Inferior To The Smell Of The Sea, Bitter Where It Borders On Taste, And More Honeysweet Where You Feel It Touching The First Sounds. Containing Depth Within Itself, Darkness, Something Of The Grave Almost.
Autumn
Sea
Smell
Understand, I'll Slip Quietly Away From The Noisy Crowd When I See The Pale Stars Rising, Blooming, Over The Oaks. I'll Pursue Solitary Pathways Through The Pale Twilit Meadows With Only This One Dream: You Come Too.
Dream
Stars
Reading
Fame Is The Sum Of The Misunderstanding That Gathers About A New Name.
Idols
Names
Fame
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.
Faith
Fear
Moving
Where Something Becomes Extremely Difficult And Unbearable, There We Also Stand Always Already Quite Near Its Transformation.
Unbearable
Transformation
Difficult
Love Consists In This, That Two Solitudes Protect And Touch And Greet Each Other.
Love
Life
Sexy
Be Ahead Of All Farewells As If They Were Behind You, Like The Winter That Is Just Departing.
Farewell
Winter
Behind You
Love The Questions, Themselves.
Nothing Touches A Work Of Art So Little As Criticism.
Art
Criticism
Littles
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.
Artist
Creative
Grace
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.
Wise
Children
Giving Up
If You Will Stay Close To Nature, To Its Simplicity, To The Small Things Hardly Noticeable, Those Things Can Unexpectedly Become Great And Immeasurable.
Inspiring
Nature
Simplicity
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!
Inspirational
Humble
Angel
But You, Divine Poet, You Sang On Till The End As The Swarm Of Rejected Maenads Attacked You, Shrieking, You Overpowered Their Noise With Harmony, And From Pure Destruction Arose Your Transfigured Song.
Song
Maenads
Noise
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.
Love
Children
Flower
What We Call Fate Does Not Come Into Us From The Outside, But Emerges From Us.
Fate
Doe
You Must Think That Something Is Happening Upon You, That Life Has Not Forgotten You, That It Holds You In Its Hand; It Will Not Let You Fall.
Fall
Hands
Forgotten
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
Fighting
Winning
Want
Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen. Otherwise It Will Be Too Easy For You To Look With Blame... At Your Past, Which Naturally Has A Share With Everything That Now Meets You.
Change
Past
Looks
You Darkness, That I Come From, I Love You More Than All The Fires That Fence In The World, For The Fire Makes A Circle Of Light For Everyone, And Then No One Outside Learns Of You. But The Darkness Pulls In Everything: Shapes And Fires, Animals And Myself, How Easily It Gathers Them! - Powers And People - And It Is Possible A Great Energy Is Moving Near Me. I Have Faith In Nights.
I Love You More
Moving
Animal
It Is Part Of The Nature Of Every Definitive Love That Sooner Or Later It Can Reach The Beloved Only In Infinity.
Infinity
Beloved
Sooner Or Later
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.
Lying
Opportunity
Two
It Is Good To Say It Aloud: 'nothing Has Happened.' Once Again: 'nothing Has Happened.' Does That Help?"
Doe
Helping
Happened
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.
Fall
Home
Borders
I Implore Those Who Love Me To Love My Solitude.
Solitude
Every Angel Is Terrifying.
Angel
Elegy
A Good Marriage Is That In Which Each Appoints The Other Guardian Of His Solitude
Inspirational
Anniversary
Marriage
There May Be Good, But There Are No Pleasant Marriages.
May
Be Good
Pleasant
It Is A Tremendous Act Of Violence To Begin Anything. I Am Not Able To Begin. I Simply Skip What Should Be The Beginning.
New Beginnings
Able
Violence
I Have Patience For Centuries In Me And Will Live As Though My Time Were Very Big.
Century
Bigs
Having Patience
Who Has Not Sat Before His Own Heart's Curtain? It Lifts: And The Scenery Is Falling Apart.
Falling In Love
Heart
Falling Apart
For One Human Being To Love Another; That Is Perhaps The Most Difficult Of All Our Tasks, The Ultimate, The Last Test And Proof, The Work For Which All Other Work Is But Preparation.
Love
Life
Inspiring
Society Has Been Able To Create Refuges Of Every Sort, For Since It Preferred To Take Love-life As An Amusement, It Also Had To Give It An Easy Form, Cheap, Safe, And Sure, As Public Amusements Are.
Love Life
Giving
Amusement
I Am Much Too Alone In This World, Yet Not Alone Enough
World
Enough
This World
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.
Art
Clever
Mean
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.
Islands
Bridges
Soul
Your Preparation For The Real World Is Not In The Answers You’ve Learned, But In The Questions You’ve Learned How To Ask Yourself.
Real
Preparation
Answers
Someday You Will Name Me, Then Gently Place Those Burning Holy Roses In My Hair.
Hair
Names
Rose
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.
Fall
Bird
Teach
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.
Art
Real
Practice
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.
Heart
Inner Peace
Relaxation
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.
Grief
Dark
Night
Whoever Now Makes Himself Bigger, Freer And More Human In His Own Existence, Is Doing His Part Toward Peace, — As Yet It Must Be Worked At In An Inward Direction, Not Until A Few Have It All Big And Ready Within Them Can It Let Itself Be Brought Into The World.
Existence
Humans
The Only Sadnesses That Are Dangerous And Unhealthy Are The Ones That We Carry Around In Public In Order To Drown Them Out With The Noise.
Sadness
Order
Noise
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.
God
Children
Night
Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism.
Knowing
Doubt
Criticism
There Is Time Only To Work Slowly There Is No Time Not To Love
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.
Art
People
Choices
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.
Essence
Tasks
Earth
Perhaps Then, Some Day Far In The Future, You Will Gradually, Without Even Noticing It, Live Your Way Into The Answer.
Depression
Patience
Mindfulness
True Singing Is A Different Breath, About Nothing.
Singing
Different
Breaths
One Had To Take Some Action Against Fear When Once It Laid Hold Of One.
Fear
Action
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.
Loneliness
Agreement
Solitude
Be Out Of Sync With Your Times For Just One Day, And You Will See How Much Eternity You Contain Within You.
One Day
Eternity
Sync
You Are Also The Physician Who Must Watch Over Yourself. But In The Course Of Every Illness There Are Many Days In Which The Physician Can Do Nothing But Wait.
Waiting
Over You
Physicians
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.
Confidence
Believe
Reality
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.
Art
Mean
Solitude
It’s Possible, I’m Moving Through The Hard Veins Of Heavy Mountains, Like An Arc, Alone; I’m So Deep Inside, I See No End In Sight, And No Distance: Everything Is Getting Near And Everything Near Is Turning To Stone.
Distance
Moving
Sight
Most People Have Turned Their Solutions Toward What Is Easy And Toward The Easiest Side Of The Easy; But It Is Clear That We Must Trust In What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Trusts In It.
Inspirational
People
Alive
Often A Star Was Waiting For You To Notice It. A Wave Rolled Toward You Out Of The Distant Path, Or As You Walked Under An Open Window, A Violin Yielded Itself To Your Hearing. All This Was Mission.
Stars
Waiting
Violin
And Still It Is Not Enough To Have Memories. One Must Be Able To Forget Them When They Are Many, And One Must Have The Great Patience To Wait Until They Come Again. For It Is Not Yet The Memories Themselves. Not Until They Have Turned To Blood Within Us, To Glance, To Gesture, Nameless And No Longer To Be Distinguished From Ourselves - Not Until Then Can It Happen That In A Most Rare Hour The First Word Of A Verse Arises In Their Midst And Goes Forth From Them.
Memories
Blood
Waiting
It Was Not In Me It Came And Went I Wanted To Hold It It Was Held By Wine (i No Longer Know What It Was)
Wine
Wanted
Knows
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.
Pain
Color
Intellectual
Deeply I Go Down Into Myself. My God Is Dark And Like A Webbing Made Of A Hundred Roots That Drink In Silence.
God
Dark
Roots
The Point Is To Live Everything.
Take Your Well-disciplined Strengths, Stretch Them Between The Two Great Opposing Poles, Because Inside Human Beings Is Where God Learns.
Two
Wells
Humans
And These Things That Keep Alive On Departure Know That You Praise Them; Transient, They Look To Us, The Most Transient, To Be Their Rescue. They Want Us To Change Them Completely, In Our Invisible Hearts, Into -- O Endlessly -- Us! Whoever, Finally, We May Be.
Heart
Looks
Alive
Trees Do Not Force Their Sap, Nor Does The Flower Push Its Bloom.
Flower
Tree
Doe
What Happens Most Deeply Inside You Is Worthy Of Your Whole Love.
Worthy
Happens
Whole
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.
Knowing
Answers
Patient
Und Dastotsein Ist Mu« Hsam Und Voller Nachholn, Dass Man Allm A« Hlich Ein Wenig Ewigkeit Spu« Rt. And Being Dead Is Hard Work And Full Of Retrieval Before One Can Gradually Feel A Trace Of Eternity.
Hard Work
Men
Eternity
Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness.
Art
Loneliness
Infinite
I Think Of You Often, Dear, And With Such Concentrated Wishes That It Really Must Help You In Some Way.
Thinking
Wish
Way
But Suppose The Endlessly Dead Were To Wake In Us Some Emblem: They Might Point To The Catkins Hanging From The Empty Hazel Trees, Or Direct Us To The Rain Descending On Black Earth In Early Spring. --- And We, Who Always Think Of Happiness Rising, Would Feel The Emotion That Almost Baffles Us When A Happy Thing Falls.
Spring
Rain
Fall
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.
Country
Spring
Expression
Who, If I Cried Out, Would Hear Me Among The Angels'hierarchies? And Even If One Of Thempressed Me Against His Heart: I Would Be Consumedin That Overwhelming Existence. For Beauty Is Nothingbut The Beginning Of Terror, Which We Still Are Just Able To Endure,and We Are So Awed Because It Serenely Disdainsto Annihilate Us. Every Angel Is Terrifying.
Heart
Angel
Would Be
Beauty Is Nothing But The Beginning Of Terror, Which We Are Still Just Able To Endure, And We Are So Awed Because It Serenely Disdains To Annihilate Us.
Able
Endure
Terror
We Ignore The Gods And Fill Our Minds With Trash.
Mind
Trash
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.
Memories
Flower
Looks
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.
House
Leaving
Lasts
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.
Giving
Perfect
Joy
I Love The Dark Hours Of My Being. My Mind Deepens Into Them. There I Can Find, As In Old Letters, The Days Of My Life, Already Lived, And Held Like A Legend, And Understood.
Dark
Mind
Letters
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
Summer
Spring
Mean
Thus We Live, Forever Taking Leave.
Spiritual
Forever
Dying
I Don't Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.
Inspirational
Lying
Want
Don't Observe Yourself Too Closely. Don't Be Too Quick To Draw Conclusions From What Happens To You; Simply Let It Happen.
Observation
Conclusion
Draws
Fame — The Aggregate Of All The Misunderstandings That Collect Around A New Name.
Names
Fame
Miscellaneous
The Artist's Task Consists Of Making One Thing Of Many, And A World From The Smallest Part Of A Thing.
Artist
Tasks
World
Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer
Answers
To Work Is To Live Without Dying.
Work
Dying
We Are Not Permitted To Linger, Even With What Is Most Intimate.
Intimate
God Speaks To Each Of Us As He Makes Us, Then Walks With Us Silently Out Of The Night. These Are The Words We Dimly Hear: You, Sent Out Beyond Your Recall, Go To The Limits Of Your Longing. Embody Me. Flare Up Like A Flame And Make Big Shadows I Can Move In. Let Everything Happen To You: Beauty And Terror. Just Keep Going. No Feeling Is Final. Don't Let Yourself Lose Me. Nearby Is The Country They Call Life. You Will Know It By Its Seriousness. Give Me Your Hand.
Country
Moving
Night
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.
Children
Drama
Believe
And Isn't The Whole World Yours? For How Often You Set It On Fire With Your Love And Saw It Blaze And Burn Up And Secretly Replaced It With Another World While Everyone Slept. You Felt In Such Complete Harmony With God, When Every Morning You Asked Him For A New Earth, So That All The Ones He Had Made Could Have Their Turn. You Thought It Would Be Shabby To Save Them And Repair Them; You Used Them Up And Held Out Your Hands, Again And Again, For More World. For Your Love Was Equal To Everything.
Life
Morning
Fire
Perhaps Everything Terrifying Is Deep Down A Helpless Thing That Needs Our Help.
Needs
Helping
Deep Down
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.
Earth
Irrevocable
Has Beens
There Is Only One Journey. Going Inside Yourself.
Military
Healing
Journey
Perhaps Creating Something Is Nothing But An Act Of Profound Remembrance.
Creating
Profound
Remembrance
Ah, How Good It Is To Be Among People Who Are Reading!
Book
Reading
People
The Quieter We Are, The More Patient And Open We Are In Our Sadnesses, The More Deeply And Serenely The New Presence Can Enter Us, And The More We Can Make It Our Own, The More It Becomes Our Fate.
Sadness
Fate
Patient
You Must Give Birth To Your Images. They Are The Future Waiting To Be Born.
Future
Giving
Waiting
Learn To Love The Questions Themselves.
Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.
Weight
Life Is
All Things
What Keeps You From... Living Your Life As A Painful And Lovely Day In The History Of A Great Pregnancy?
Pregnancy
Live Your Life
Lovely
There Are Quantities Of Human Beings, But There Are Many More Faces, For Each Person Has Several.
Faces
Humans
Persons
Go Into Yourself And Test The Deeps In Which Your Life Takes Rise; At Its Source You Will Find The Answer To The Question Whether You Must Create. Accept It, Just As It Sounds, Without Inquiring Into It. Perhaps It Will Turn Out That You Are Called To Be An Artist. Then Take That Destiny Upon Yourself And Bear It, Its Burden And Its Greatness, Without Ever Asking What Reward Might Come From Outside
Artist
Greatness
Destiny
Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?
Impermanence
Fragrance
As If No One Had Ever Tried Before, Try To Say What You See And Feel And Love And Lose.
Trying
And Love
Feels
Our Task Is To Listen To The News That Is Always Arriving Out Of Silence.
Silence
Intuition
Arriving
Love Is Like The Measles. The Older You Get It, The Worse The Attack.
Love
Measles
Love You
I Am A House Gutted By Fire Where Only The Guilty Sometimes Sleep Before The Punishment That Devours Them Hounds Them Out In The Open.
Sleep
Fire
Punishment
Do Not Allow Yourself To Be Misled By The Surfaces Of Things
Misled
Surface
And Now Let Us Believe In A Long Year That Is Given To Us, New, Untouched, Full Of Things That Have Never Been, Full Of Work That Has Never Been Done, Full Of Tasks, Claims, And Demands; And Let Us See That We Learn To Take It Without Letting Fall Too Much Of What It Has To Bestow Upon Those Who Demand Of It Necessary, Serious, And Great Things.
Believe
Fall
Years
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.
Writing
Use
Stranger
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.
Children
Thinking
Sad And Happy
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.
Vision
Encounters
Done
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.
Dog
People
Worry
We Need, In Love, To Practice Only This: Letting Each Other Go. For Holding On Comes Easily; We Do Not Need To Learn It.
Broken Heart
Letting Go
Practice
Think... Of The World You Carry Within You.
Healing
Thinking
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.
Life
Determination
Doe
Again And Again In History Some People Wake Up. They Have No Ground In The Crowd And Move To Broader Deeper Laws. They Carry Strange Customs With Them And Demand Room For Bold And Audacious Action. The Future Speaks Ruthlessly Through Them. They Change The World.
Moving
Law
People
It Wasn't His, It Wasn't My Fault, We Both Had Nothing Except Patience, But Death Has None. I Saw Him Come (how Meanly!) And I Watched Him As He Took And Took: None Of It I Could Claim As Mine.
Saws
Faults
Claims
It Is Clear That We Must Trust What Is Difficult; Everything Alive Trusts In It, Everything In Nature Grows And Defends Itself Any Way It Can And Is Spontaneously Itself, Tries To Be Itself At All Costs And Against All Opposition. We Know Little, But That We Must Trust In What Is Difficult Is A Certainty That Will Never Abandon Us; It Is Good To Be Solitary, For Solitude Is Difficult; That Something Is Difficult Must Be One More Reason For Us To Do It.
Solitude
Trying
Cost
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.
Humble
Desire
Triumph
Do You Recall, From Your Childhood On, How Very Much This Life Of Yours Has Longed For Greatness? I See It Now, How From The Vantage Point Of Greatness It Longs For Even Greater Greatness. That Is Why It Does Not Let Up Being Difficult, But That Is Also Why It Will Not Cease To Grow.
Greatness
Childhood
Doe
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.
Different
Celebration
Thread
Falling Stars: Do You Remember Still The Falling Stars That Like Swift Horses Through The Heavens Raced And Suddenly Leaped Across The Hurdles Of Our Wishes -- Do You Recall? And We Did Make So Many! For There Were Countless Numbers Of Stars: Each Time We Looked Above We Were Astounded By The Swiftness Of Their Daring Play, While In Our Hearts We Felt Safe And Secure Watching These Brilliant Bodies Disintegrate, Knowing Somehow We Had Survived Their Fall.
Horse
Stars
Fall
Perhaps All The Dragons In Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Act, Just Once, With Beauty And Courage. Perhaps Everything That Frightens Us Is, In Its Deepest Essence, Something Helpless That Wants Our Love.
Love
Life
Beauty
Love And Death Are The Great Gifts That Are Given To Us; Mostly They Are Passed On Unopened.
Love And Death
Given
Great Gifts
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.
Heart
Sky
Bird
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.
Dying
Accomplish
Unreal
Dig Deep Into Your Heart, Where The Answer Spreads Its Roots In Your Being, And Ask Yourself Solemnly, Must I Write?
Writing
Heart
Roots
Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.
Wish
Idealism
Recollection
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.
Two
Voice
Together
So It's Back Once More, Back Up The Slope. Why Do They Always Ruin My Rope With Their Cuts? I Felt So Ready The Other Day, Had A Real Foretaste Of Eternity In My Guts. Spoonfeeding Me Yet Another Sip From Life's Cup. I Don't Want It, Won't Take Any More Of It. Let Me Throw Up. Life Is Medium Rare And Good, I See, And The World Full Of Soup And Bread, But It Won't Pass Into The Blood For Me, Just Goes To My Head. It Makes Me Ill, Though Others It Feeds; Do See That I Must Deny It! For A Thousand Years From Now At Least I'm Keeping A Diet.
Real
Cutting
Blood
I Want To Unfold. I Don’t Want To Stay Folded Anywhere, Because Where I Am Folded, There I Am A Lie.
Lying
Want
Secretive
Works Of Art Are Of An Infinite Loneliness And With Nothing So Little To Be Reached As With Criticism.
Art
Loneliness
Criticism
Trending Author
Washington Irving
Kevin Pietersen
Hank Azaria
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Diane Arbus
Ben Quayle
Category
Information