Fig tree, how long it's been full meaning for me, the way you almost entirely omit to flower and into the seasonably-resolute fruit uncelebratedly thrust your purest secret. Like the tube of a fountain, your bent bough drives the sap downwards and up: and it leaps from its sleep, scarce waking, into the joy of its sweetest achievement.
Rainer Maria RilkeThat is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.
Rainer Maria RilkeWe 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.
Rainer Maria RilkeDo not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.
Rainer Maria Rilke