I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

I am too alone in the world and not alone enough to make every moment holy.

You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that even this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change when you were sad?

Thus we live, forever taking leave.

Girls, there are poets who learn from you to say, what you, in your aloneness, are; and they learn through you to live distantness, as the evenings through the great stars become accustomed to eternity.

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.