β
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
β
β
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
β
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
β
β
Henry Ward Beecher
β
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of sceneryβair, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
β
You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
β
β
Leonardo da Vinci
β
It's not natural for women to fight."
"It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
β
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
Usually I'm remarkably good natured. Try me on a day that doesn't end in y.
β
β
Cassandra Clare
β
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
β
β
Lao Tzu
β
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
I've found that there is always some beauty left -- in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
β
β
John Muir
β
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
β
β
George Carlin
β
But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, βThe fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
β
β
Vincent van Gogh
β
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
β
β
John Muir
β
The more one judges, the less one loves.
β
β
HonorΓ© de Balzac (Physiologie Du Mariage: Ou Meditations De Philosophie Eclectique, Sur Le Bonheur Et Le Malheur Conjugal)
β
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Aliceβs Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)
β
What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.
β
β
Dan Brown (The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2))
β
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Catβs Cradle)
β
I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
Sex is part of nature. I go along with nature.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?
β
β
Percy Bysshe Shelley
β
The mountains are calling and I must go.
β
β
John Muir
β
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more
β
β
Lord Byron
β
We are all born sexual creatures,thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.
β
β
George Carlin
β
Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.
β
β
Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)
β
People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
β
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
β
β
Margaret Atwood (Bluebeard's Egg)
β
Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
β
β
John Updike
β
there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
β
β
Robert Frost
β
Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.
β
β
Samuel Beckett
β
There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
β
β
G.K. Chesterton
β
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (A Room of Oneβs Own)
β
There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.
β
β
Garrison Keillor
β
Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be.
β
β
Temple Grandin
β
As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.
β
β
Will Shortz
β
In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.
β
β
Dorothy Parker (The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker)
β
Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You donβt. I donβt. People are much more complicated than that. Itβs true of everybody.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
β
Someday you'll find someone special again. People who've been in love once usually do. It's in their nature.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
β
Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.
β
β
Jamaica Kincaid
β
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.
β
β
Elisabeth KΓΌbler-Ross
β
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
β
β
John Burroughs (Studies in Nature and Literature)
β
Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.
β
β
Brian Jacques (Taggerung (Redwall, #14))
β
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
β
She was my dream. She made me who I am, and holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about her all the time. Even now, when I'm sitting here, I think about her. There could never have been another.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
β
If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
β
We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.
β
β
Sigmund Freud
β
Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
β
Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration.
β
β
Pat Conroy (The Lords of Discipline)
β
Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
β
β
Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)
β
I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.
β
β
Aldo Leopold
β
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
β
β
Lao Tzu
β
Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.
β
β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting β
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
β
β
Mary Oliver
β
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt
β
Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).
β
β
Jess C. Scott (The Other Side of Life)
β
Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.
β
β
Robert A. Heinlein
β
Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
β
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
β
β
Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
β
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
β
β
Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom)
β
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β such is my idea of happiness.
β
β
Leo Tolstoy (Π‘Π΅ΠΌΠ΅ΠΉΠ½ΠΎΠ΅ ΡΡΠ°ΡΡΠΈΠ΅)
β
When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others
β
β
Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)
β
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
Gaea?β Leo shook his head. βIsnβt that Mother Nature? Sheβs supposed to have, like, flowers in her hair and birds singing around her and dear and rabbits doing her laundry.β
βLeo, thatβs Snow White,β Piper said.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
β
Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.
β
β
Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
β
There is no such thing as a "broken family." Family is family, and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers, and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)
β
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
β
β
Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela)
β
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
β
β
John Muir (The Mountains of California)
β
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.
β
β
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
β
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.
β
β
Tupac Shakur (The Rose That Grew from Concrete)
β
I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when youβre born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when youβre fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)
β
It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language
β
β
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
β
She turned back to Jace. "Do you have to be so-," she began, but stopped when she saw his face. It looked stripped down, oddly vulnerable.
"Unpleasant?" he finishes for her. "Only at days when my adoptive mother tosses me out of the house with instructions never to darken her door again. Usually I'm remarkably good-natured. Try me on any day that doesn't end in y.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...
β
β
Pamela Redmond Satran
β
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into oneβs life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to oneβs side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery
β
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
β
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
β
β
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
β
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd;
By thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
β
One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.
β
β
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
β
Sensitive people are the most genuine and honest people you will ever meet. There is nothing they wonβt tell you about themselves if they trust your kindness. However, the moment you betray them, reject them or devalue them, they become the worse type of person. Unfortunately, they end up hurting themselves in the long run. They donβt want to hurt other people. It is against their very nature. They want to make amends and undo the wrong they did. Their life is a wave of highs and lows. They live with guilt and constant pain over unresolved situations and misunderstandings. They are tortured souls that are not able to live with hatred or being hated. This type of person needs the most love anyone can give them because their soul has been constantly bruised by others. However, despite the tragedy of what they have to go through in life, they remain the most compassionate people worth knowing, and the ones that often become activists for the broken hearted, forgotten and the misunderstood. They are angels with broken wings that only fly when loved.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
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.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple βI must,β then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...
...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, donβt blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the worldβs sounds β wouldnβt you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.
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Rainer Maria Rilke