Rainer Maria Rilke

Our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures.

There is only One Journey.

Going inside yourself.

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

This is the creature there has never been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.

Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.
And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace

of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only the Possibility of Being.
And that was able to confer
such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.

Whitely it stole up to a maid - to be
within the silver mirror
and in her

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples - those myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses.  Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us, once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible in our lives is, in its deepest being, something helpless, that wants help from us.

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever known, if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadow passes over your hands and over all that you do.  You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.

No, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects, continuously admired by generations and patched and mended by workmen's hands, signify nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value;-- but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess of that precious nourishing love from which flowers and children have their strength and which could help all human beings if they would take it without doubting.

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.