Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

 "If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. If you will love what seems to be insignificant and will in an unassuming manner, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier, more harmonious, and somehow more conciliatory, not for your intellect - that will most likely remain behind, astonished - but for your innermost consciousness, your awakeness, and your inner knowing."

"dear friend, embrace your solitude and love it."

"Your innermost happening is worth all your love."

"Do not expend too much courage or time to clarify your position to others."

"We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance."

"To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely preparation. For that reason young people -  who are beginners in everything - cannot yet love; they do not know how to love. They must learn it. With their whole being, with all strengths enveloping their lonely, disquieted heart, they must learn to love - even while their heartbeat is quickening."

"it is so important to be alone and observant when one is sad."

"It is always my wish that you might find enough patience within yourself to endure, and enough innocence to have faith. It is my wish that you might gain more and more trust in whatever is difficult for you, in your aloneness, among other things. Allow life to happen to you. Believe me, life is right in all cases."

My Favourite Quotes from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke