How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of...

I want my own will, and I wantsimply to be with my will,as it goes toward action.And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who knowsecret...

But now that so much is changing, isn’t it time for us to change? Couldn’t we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of...

I would like to sing someone to sleep,to sit beside someone and be there.I would like to rock you and sing softlyand go with you to and from sleep.I would like to be the one...

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.

Again and again, however we know the landscape of loveand the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the othersfall: again and again the two of us walk out...

I live my life in widening circleThat 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...

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every...

Odd, the words: ‘while away the time’.How to hold it fast the harder thing.Who is not fearful: where is there a staying,where in all this is there any being?Look, as the day slows towards the...

Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones...

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.

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

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...

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enoughto make every moment holy.I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enoughjust to lie before you like a thing,shrewd and secretive.I...

Art is childhood.

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its home.Speak and attest. More than everthe things we can live with are falling away,and ousting them, filling their place, a will with no image.Will beneath...

Let your judgements have their own quiet, undisturbed development, which must, like all progress, come from deep within, and cannot in any way be pressed or hurried.

La solitude qui enveloppe les oeuvres d’art est infinie, etil n’estrien qui permette de moins les atteindre que la critique. Seul l’amour peut les appréhender, les saisir et faire preuve de justesse à leur endroit:

Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to...

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...

Someday you will name me, then gently place those burning holy roses in my hair.[Songs of Longing]

But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother,stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.Not for your mouth, you who hold him now,did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.Do you really think your quiet...

a kind of memory that tells usthat what we’re now striving for was oncenearer and truer and attached to uswith infinite tenderness. Here all is distance,there it was breath. After the first homethe second one...

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...

Then suddenly you’re left all alonewith your body that can’t love youand your will that can’t save you.

Look: the trees exist; the houseswe dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only wepass by it all, like a rush of air.And everything conspires to keep quiet about us,half out of shame perhaps, half out of...

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world.

We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all.

That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, is already...

What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew...

Now we wake up with our memoryand fix our gazes on that which was;whispering sweetness, which once coursed through us,sits silently beside us with loosened hair

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other...

Every angel is terrifying.

Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.

Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.

Long you must suffer, knowing not what,until suddenly out of spitefully chewed fruit your suffering’s taste comes forth in you.Then you will love almost instantly what’s tasted. No one will ever talk you out of...

The more we speak of solitude, the clearer it becomes that at the bottom it is not something one can choose to take or leave. We are lonely. One can deceive oneself about it and...

Seulement la terre qui obéit,sait bien qu’elle tourne en rond,tandis que nous vers l’infininous précipitons.Translation:But the obedient Earth well knowsthat she moves round and round,whereas we hurtle downtoward infinity.

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask...

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.

And those, who come together in the night and are twined in quivering pleasure, are performing a serious work and are heaping up sweetness, depth and force for the song of some coming poet, who...

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...

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.

THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayersstopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witnessthe unbelievable: for there before him stoodthe legendary creature, startling white, thathad approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.The legs, so...

So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and...

Let This Darkness Be a Bell TowerQuiet friend who has come so far,feel how your breathing makes more space around you.Let this darkness be a bell towerand you the bell. As you ring,what batters you...

Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of...

Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.

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...

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still;slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;and without any feet can go to you;and tongueless, I can conjure you at will.Break off my...