Sign in with Facebook
7,815 books
—
49,770 voters
“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“I need to live like that crooked tree--...
that knelt down in the hardest winds
but could not be blasted away.”
―
that knelt down in the hardest winds
but could not be blasted away.”
―
“Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“I did not know the work of mourning
Is like carrying a bag of cement
Up a mountain at night
The mountaintop is not in sight
Because there is no mountaintop
Poor Sisyphus grief
I did not know I would struggle
Through a ragged underbrush
Without an upward path
Because there is no path
There is only a blunt rock
With a river to fall into
And Time with its medieval chambers
Time with its jagged edges
And blunt instruments
I did not know the work of mourning
Is a labor in the dark
We carry inside ourselves
Though sometimes when I sleep
I'm with him again
And then I wake
Poor Sisyphus grief
I'm not ready for your heaviness
Cemented to my body
Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders
That's why it takes courage
To get out of bed in the morning
And climb into the day”
― Gabriel: A Poem
Is like carrying a bag of cement
Up a mountain at night
The mountaintop is not in sight
Because there is no mountaintop
Poor Sisyphus grief
I did not know I would struggle
Through a ragged underbrush
Without an upward path
Because there is no path
There is only a blunt rock
With a river to fall into
And Time with its medieval chambers
Time with its jagged edges
And blunt instruments
I did not know the work of mourning
Is a labor in the dark
We carry inside ourselves
Though sometimes when I sleep
I'm with him again
And then I wake
Poor Sisyphus grief
I'm not ready for your heaviness
Cemented to my body
Look closely and you will see
Almost everyone carrying bags
Of cement on their shoulders
That's why it takes courage
To get out of bed in the morning
And climb into the day”
― Gabriel: A Poem
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but 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.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
Juli’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Juli’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,038 books
|
47 friends
424 books
|
94 friends
651 books
|
12 friends
430 books
|
54 friends
207 books
|
34 friends
1,259 books
|
415 friends
417 books
|
307 friends
4 books
|
25 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Juli
Lists liked by Juli
