No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
¶ Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 1 (17 Feb 1903)
trans. M. D. Herter Norton (1993)
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
¶ Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 1 (17 Feb 1903)
trans. M. D. Herter Norton (1993)
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
¶ Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4 (16 Jul 1903) trans. by M. D. Herter Norton (1993)
Alt trans. (Stephen Mitchell): "Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
¶ Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 7 (14 Mar 1904)
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
¶ Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 7 (14 Mar 1904)
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
¶ Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
