And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves — only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
For the things whose essential life you want to express, begin by asking, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me? And if the thing sees that you are preoccupied, with even a mere particle of your interest, it shuts itself up again: it may perhaps give you a counter-sign, it may make a little, faintly friendly sign but it refuses to give you its heart, to disclose to you its patient being, its sweet constancy that makes it so like the constellations. If a thing is to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon, which, thanks to your laborious and exclusive love, is one placed at the center of the Universe, and there, in that incomparable place, is this day attended by the Angels.
I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.
True singing is a different breath, about nothing.
Do not divert your love from visible things. But go on loving what is good, simple and ordinary; animals and things and flowers, and keep the balance true.
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
...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 look now for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult task of all..., the work for which all other work is but preparation. It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen...a great claim upon us, something that chooses us out and calls us to vast things
Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and they 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.