Background Image

...

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.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

You Darkness, That I

Rainer Maria Rilke

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

I Love You More

More From Rainer Maria Rilke

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

To Be Loved Means To Be Consumed. To Love Is To Give Light With Inexhaustible Oil. To Be Loved Is To Pass Away, To Love Is To Endure.

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

So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp.

Truly It Is Glorious, Our Being Here.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

To Work Is To Live Without Dying.

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.

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

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

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

There Is Only One Journey. Going Inside Yourself.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Is Clear That We Must Embrace Struggle. Every Living Thing Conforms To It. Everything In Nature Grows And Struggles In Its Own Way, Establishing Its Own Identity, Insisting On It At All Cost, Against All Resistance.

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

For Our Part, When We Feel, We Evaporate; Ah, We Breathe Ourselves Out And Away; With Each New Heartfire We Give Off A Fainter Scent. True, Someone May Tell Us: You're In My Blood, This Room, Spring Itself Is Filled With You . . . To What End? He Can't Hold Us, We Vanish Within Him And Around Him.

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

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

Beauty Is Only The Start Of Bearable Terror.

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.

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.

My Blood Is Alive With Many Voices Telling Me I Am Made Of Longing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Losing Too Is Still Ours; And Even Forgetting Still Has A Shape In The Kingdom Of Transformation. When Something's Let Go Of, It Circles; And Though We Are Rarely The Center Of The Circle, It Draws Around Us Its Unbroken, Marvelous Curve.

I Believe That Nothing That Is Real Can Pass Away.

What Batters You Becomes Your Strength.

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.

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

Live The Questions Now.

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.

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

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

The Necessary Thing Is After All But This; Solitude, Great Inner Solitude. Going Into Oneself For Hours Meeting No One - This One Must Be Able To Attain.

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

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

Spring Has Again Returned. The Earth Is Like A Child That Knows Many Poems. Many, O So Many. For The Hardship Of Such Long Learning She Receives The Prize. Strict Was Her Teacher. The White In The Old Man's Beard Pleases Us. Now, What To Call Green, To Call Blue, We Dare To Ask: She Knows, She Knows!

How Can I Keep My Soul In Me, So That It Doesn't Touch Your Soul? How Can I Raise It High Enough, Past You, To Other Things?

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

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.

The Knowledge Of Impermanence That Haunts Our Days Is Their Very Fragrance.

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.

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. . .

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.

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

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

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

And We, Spectators Always, Everywhere, Looking At, Never Out Of, Everything! It Fills Us. We Arrange It. It Collapses. We Re-arrange It, And Collapse Ourselves. Who's Turned Us Round Like This, So That We Always, Do What We May, Retain The Attitude Of Someone Who's Departing? Just As He, On The Last Hill, That Shows Him All His Valley For The Last Time, Will Turn And Stop And Linger, We Live Our Lives, For Ever Taking Leave.

Every Angel Is Terrifying.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Fig Tree, How Long It's Been Full Meaning For Me, The Way You Almost Entirely Omit To Flower And Into The Seasonably-resolute Fruit Uncelebratedly Thrust Your Purest Secret. Like The Tube Of A Fountain, Your Bent Bough Drives The Sap Downwards And Up: And It Leaps From Its Sleep, Scarce Waking, Into The Joy Of Its Sweetest Achievement.

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.

It Is True That These Mysteries Are Dreadful, And People Have Always Drawn Away From Them. But Where Can We Find Anything Sweet And Glorious That Would Never Wear This Mask, The Mask Of The Dreadful? Whoever Does Not, Sometimes Or Other, Give His Full Consent, His Full And Joyous Consent To The Dreadfulness Of Life, Can Never Take Possession Of The Unutterable Abundance And Power Of Our Existence; Can Only Walk On Its Edge, And One Day, When The Judgment Is Given, Will Have Been Neither Alive Nor Dead.

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.

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?

Sex Is Difficult, Yes. But They Are Difficult Things With Which We Have Been Charged...if You Only Recognize This And Manage Out Of Yourself, Out Of Your Own Nature And Ways, Out Of Your Own Experience And Childhood And Strength To Achieve A Relation To Sex Wholly Your Own (not Influenced By Convention And Custom) Then You Need No Longer Be Afraid Of Losing Yourself And Becoming Unworthy Of Your Best Possession.

I Have Patience For Centuries In Me And Will Live As Though My Time Were Very Big.

Having Patience

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")

Everything Terrible Is Something That Needs Our Love.

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.

Is Not Impermanence The Very Fragrance Of Our Days?

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

The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens.

You, Darkness, Of Whom I Am Born- I Love You More Than The Flame That Limits The World To The Circle It Illumines And Excludes The Rest.

I Love You More

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.

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

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

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

That Is The Principal Thing-not To Remain With The Dream, With The Intention, With The Being-in-the-mood, But Always Forcibly To Convert It All Into Things.

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

Dig Deep Into Your Heart, Where The Answer Spreads Its Roots In Your Being, And Ask Yourself Solemnly, Must I Write?

And Your Doubt Can Become A Good Quality If You Train It. It Must Become Knowing, It Must Become Criticism. Ask It, Whenever It Wants To Spoil Something For You, Why Something Is Ugly, Demand Proofs From It, Test It, And You Will Find It Perhaps Bewildered And Embarrassed, Perhaps Also Protesting. But Don't Give In, Insist On Arguments, And Act In This Way, Attentive And Persistent, Every Single Time, And The Day Will Come When, Instead Of Being A Destroyer, It Will Become One Of Your Best Workers-perhaps The Most Intelligent Of All The Ones That Are Building Your Life.

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.

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

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

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

For Bel.i.eve Me, The More One Is, The Richer Is All One Experiences. And Whoever Wants To Have Deep Love In His Life Must Collect And Save For It And Gather Honey.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

Were It Possible For Us To See Further Than Our Knowledge Reaches, And Yet A Little Way Beyond The Outworks Of Our Divinings, Perhaps We Would Endure Our Sadnesses With Greater Confidence Than Our Joys. For They Are The Moments When Something New Has Entered Into Us, Something Unknown; Our Feelings Grow Mute In Shy Perplexity, Everything In Us Withdraws, A Stillness Comes, And The New, Which No One Knows, Stands In The Midst Of It And Is Silent.

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.

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

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 Happening On Your Innermost Self Is Worthy Of Your Entire Love.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Go Into Yourself. Dig Into Yourself For A Deep Answer

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.

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

Beauty Everywhere

Weren't You Always Distracted By Expectation, As If Every Event Announced A Beloved? (where Can You Find A Place To Keep Her, With All The Huge Strange Thoughts Inside You Going And Coming And Often Staying All Night.).

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.

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.

You Are Not Too Old And It Is Not Too Late To Dive Into Your Increasing Depths Where Life Calmly Gives Out It's Own Secret

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

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.

Life - A Sexually Transmitted Terminal Condition.

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.

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

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

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.

In This There Is No Measuring With Time, A Year Doesn’t Matter, And Ten Years Are Nothing. Being An Artist Means: Not Numbering And Counting, But Ripening Like A Tree, Which Doesn’t Force Its Sap, And Stands Confidently In The Storms Of Spring, Not Afraid That Afterward Summer May Not Come. It Does Come. But It Comes Only To Those Who Are Patient, Who Are There As If Eternity Lay Before Them, So Unconcernedly Silent And Vast. I Learn It Every Day Of My Life, Learn It With Pain I Am Grateful For: Patience Is Everything!

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.

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.

You Must Give Birth To Your Images. They Are The Future Waiting To Be Born. Fear Not The Strangeness You Feel. The Future Must Enter You Long Before It Happens. Just Wait For The Birth, For The The Hour Of The New Clarity.

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

Falling In Love

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

All Professions Are... Filled With Demands.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Only Journey Is The One Within.

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

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.

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

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.

Who Speaks Of Conquering? To Endure Is Everything.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

You, God, Who Live Next Door - If At Times, Through The Long Night, I Trouble You With My Urgent Knocking - This Is Why: I Hear You Breathe So Seldom. I Know You're All Alone In That Room. If You Should Be Thirsty, There's No One To Get You A Glass Of Water. I Wait Listening, Always. Just Give Me A Sign! I'm Right Here... Sen Komşu Tanrı, Uzun Geceler Bazen, Kapına Vura Vura Uyandırıyorsam Seni Solumanı Seyrek Duyduğumdandır... Bilirim, Yalnızsın Odanda. Sana Birşey Gerekse Kimse Yok, Bir Yudum Su Versin Aradığında. Hep Dinlerim, Yeter Ki Bir Ses Edin, Öyle Yakınım Sana.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Right In The Difficult We Must Have Our Joys, Our Happiness, Our Dreams: There Against The Depth Of This Background, They Stand Out, There For The First Time We See How Beautiful They Are.

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.

Believe In A Love That Is Being Stored Up For You Like An Inheritance, And Have Faith That In This Love There Is A Strength And A Blessing So Large That You Can Travel As Far As You Wish Without Having To Step Outside It.

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

What Do The Contours Of Your Body Mean, Laid Out Like The Lines On A Hand, So That I No Longer See Them Except As Fate?

All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.

To Love Is Good, Too: Love Being Difficult. 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 Is A High Inducement To The Individual To Ripen, To Become Something In Himself, To Become World For Himself For Another's Sake, It Is A Great Exacting Claim Upon Him, Something That Chooses Him Out And Calls Him To Vast Things.

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.

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.

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.

Dying Is Strange And Hard If It Is Not Our Death, But A Death That Takes Us By Storm, When We've Ripened None Within Us.

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

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

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

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

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.

Just Keep Going - No Feeling Is Final.

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.

We Have No Reason To Mistrust Our World, For It Is Not Against Us. Has It Terrors, They Are Our Terrors; Has It Abysses, Those Abysses Belong To Us; Are Dangers At Hand, We Must Try To Love Them.... Perhaps All The Dragons Of Our Lives Are Princesses Who Are Only Waiting To See Us Once Beautiful And Brave. Perhaps Everything Terrible Is In Its Deepest Being Something Helpless That Wants Help From Us.

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

Openness, Patience, Receptivity, Solitude Is Everything.

Trending Author

Louis Althusser

John H. Johnson

Category