“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,leaving your room, of which you know every bit;your house is the last before the infinite,whoever you are.”

“Whoever you are: in the evening step outof your room, where you know everything; yours is the last house before the far-off:whoever you are. With your eyes, which in their wearinessbarely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, you lift very slowly one black treeand place it against the sky: slender, alone.And you have made the world. And it is hugeand like a word which grows ripe in silence. And as your will seizes on its meaning,tenderly your eyes let it go...”

“Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow. Illuminated in your infinite peace, a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazinghigh above your head. But IN you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.”

“And these thingsthat keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient,they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue.They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.”

“And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with Your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.”

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers. ”

“I beg you, to 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.”