Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.

All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

Life is heavier than the weight of all things.

And you suddenly know: It was here! You pull yourself together, and there stands an irrevocable year of anguish and vision and prayer.

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