There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.
Swells, Marina? we ocean, depths, Marina? we sky!
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.
All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.
Now I come to you full of future. And from habit we begin to live our past.
They, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time.
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.
Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn’t intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.
More unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
To be in circumstances that are working upon us, that from time to time place us in front of great natural Things – that is all we need.
Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism.
Those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious.
We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.
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.
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.
No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.
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.
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?
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.
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.