We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.... Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.

Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant path, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.

Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

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.

I believe that nothing that is real can pass away.