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.

Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.

He who understands one thing understands everything, for the same laws are in all.

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?

Love the questions themselves...Live the questions now and have confidence that someday far into the future, [I will live my] way into the answer.

This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.