Hasan Asif

“I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every moment holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action;
and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
and I want my grasp of things to be
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that carried me
through the wildest storm of all.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Sometimes you have to lose what you have and find it again for you to know the value of the blessing that you have always owned.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“You’re lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?”
― Louise Penny, A Trick of the Light

“A door loses its meaning if you don’t ever go through it. It becomes a wall”
― Paul Pen, The Light of the Fireflies