Trees do not force their sap, nor does the flower push its bloom.
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater 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.
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough.
Whoever makes himself freer and more human in his own existence is doing his part towards peace.
And you suddenly know: It was here! You pull yourself together, and there stands an irrevocable year of anguish and vision and prayer.
What is happening on your innermost self is worthy of your entire love.
Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.
We are unutterably alone essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important.
Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good.
What we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us.
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.
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.
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.
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
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.
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.
Joy is a marvelous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness.
All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.