“Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,your path struggles on through incomprehensiblemankind. All the more futile perhapsfor keeping to its direction,keeping on toward the future,toward what has been lost.Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berryof jubilation, unripe.But now the whole tree of my jubilationis breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slowtree of joy.Loveliest in my invisiblelandscape, you that made me more knownto the invisible angels.”

“the longer I live, the more necessary it seems to me to endure, to copy the whole dictation of existence to the end, for it might be that only the last sentence contains that small, perhaps inconspicuous word through which all laboriously learned and not understood orients itself toward glorious sense.”

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

“So it's back once more, back up the slope.Why do they always ruin my ropewith their cuts?I felt so ready the other day,Had a real foretaste of eternityIn my guts.Spoonfeeding me yet another sipfrom life's cup.I don't want it, won't take any more of it.Let me throw up.Life is medium rare and good, I see,And the world full of soup and bread,But it won't pass into the blood for me,Just goes to my head.It makes me ill, though others it feeds;Do see that I must deny it!For a thousand years from now at leastI'm keeping a diet.”

“Often a starwas waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward youout of the distant path, or as you walkedunder an open window, a violinyielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.”

“It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.”

“We’re involved with flower, fruit, grapevine.They speak more than the language of the year.Out of the darkness a blaze of colors appears,and one perhaps that has the jealous shineOf the dead, those who strengthen the earth.What do we know of the part they assume?It’s long been their habit to marrow the loamwith their own free marrow through and through. Now the one question: Is it done gladly?The work of sullen slaves, does this fruitthrust up, clenched, toward us, its masters?Sleeping with roots, granting us only out of their surplus this hybrid made of mutestrength and kisses — are they the masters?”