My life is not this steeply sloping hour, in which you see me hurrying. Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree; I am only one of my many mouths, and at that, the one that will be still the soonest. I am the rest between two notes, which are somehow always in discord because Death’s note wants to climb over— but in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling. And the song goes on, beautiful.

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.

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.

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.