“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.... Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances... Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars
“Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
muse’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at muse’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by muse
Lists liked by muse



