It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

This above all-ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.

I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.