He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.

A billion stars go spinning through the night, / glittering above your head, / But in you is the presence that will be / when all the stars are dead.

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course.

But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem: they might point to the catkins hanging from the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the rain descending on black earth in early spring. --- And we, who always think of happiness rising, would feel the emotion that almost baffles us when a happy thing falls.

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside

Do not, do not, do not books for ever hammer at people like perpetual bells? When, between two books, silent sky appears: be glad

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.