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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?

-Rainer Maria Rilke

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You Have Had Many

Rainer Maria Rilke

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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?

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

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

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The Point Is To Live Everything.

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

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More Belongs To Marriage Than Four Legs In A Bed.

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

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.

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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.

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

Resolve To Be Always Beginning-to Be A Beginner!

To Be Here Is Immense.

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.

All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

Falling In Love

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.

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.

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.

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

Having Patience

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.

The Hero Is Strangely Akin To Those Who Die Young.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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]

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

Ah, Not To Be Cut Off, Not Through The Slightest Partition Shut Out From The Law Of The Stars. The Inner -- What Is It? If Not The Intensified Sky, Hurled Through With Birds And Deep With The Winds Of Homecoming.

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.

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.

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.

My Eyes Already Touch The Sunny Hill. Going Far Ahead Of The Road I Have Begun. So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp; It Has Inner Light, Even From A Distance- And Charges Us, Even If We Do Not Reach It, Into Something Else, Which, Hardly Sensing It, We Already Are; A Gesture Waves Us On Answering Our Own Wave... But What We Feel Is The Wind In Our Faces.

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

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.

Life Is Heavier Than The Weight Of All Things.

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.

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

Space For The Spirit To Breathe.

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.

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.

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?

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

Be Of Good Courage All Is Before You, And Time Passed In The Difficult Is Never Lost...what Is Required Of Us Is That We Live The Difficult And Learn To Deal With It. In The Difficult Are The Friendly Forces, The Hands That Work On Us.

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

Who Speaks Of Conquering? To Endure Is Everything.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Truly To Sing, That Is A Different Breath.

He Reproduced Himself With So Much Humble Objectivity, With The Unquestioning, Matter Of Fact Interest Of A Dog Who Sees Himself In A Mirror And Thinks: There's Another Dog.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

So This Is Where People Come To Live; I Would Have Thought It Is A City To Die In.

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

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.

Just As Language Has No Longer Anything In Common With The Thing It Names, So The Movements Of Most Of The People Who Live In Cities Have Lost Their Connection With The Earth; They Hang, As It Were, In The Air, Hover In All Directions, And Find No Place Where They Can Settle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Painting Is Something That Takes Place Among The Colors.

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.

Wishes Are Recollections Coming From The Future.

So We Are Grasped By What We Cannot Grasp.

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.

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.

No, We Don't Accomplish Our Love In A Single Year As The Flowers Do; An Immemorial Sap Flows Up Through Our Arms When We Love. Dear Girl, This: That We Loved, Inside Us, Not One Who Would Someday Appear, But Seething Multitudes; Not Just A Single Child, But Also The Fathers Lying In Our Depths Like Fallen Mountains; Also The Dried-up Riverbeds Of Ancient Mothers-;also The Whole Soundless Landscape Under The Clouded Or Clear Sky Of Its Destiny -; All This, My Dear, Preceded You.

Now For Some Heartwork.

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

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.

It Is Always What I Have Already Said: Always The Wish That You May Find Patience Enough In Yourself To Endure, And Simplicity Enough To Believe; That You May Acquire More And More Confidence In That Which Is Difficult, And In Your Solitude Among Others. And For The Rest, Let Life Happen To You. Believe Me: Life Is Right, In Any Case.

Life - A Sexually Transmitted Terminal Condition.

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

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

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.

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.

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Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Winifred Holtby

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