“It is part of the nature of every definitive love that sooner or later it can reach the beloved only in infinity.”

“weren’t you alwaysdistracted by expectation, as if every eventannounced a beloved? (Where can you find a placeto keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside yougoing and coming and often staying all night.)…”

“World was in the face of the beloved--,but suddenly it poured out and was gone:world is outside, world can not be grasped.Why didn't I, from the full, beloved faceas I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drinkworld, so near that I couldn't almost taste it?Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank.But I was filled up also, with too muchworld, and, drinking, I myself ran over.”

“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.”

“All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.”

“Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.”

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”