Just as youth has to give way to age
And flowers must fade, so at every stage
All things of virtue, beautiful and clever
Must bloom and fade, for naught goes on for ever.
With each fresh call from life, prepare the heart
To say goodbye, and then once more to start.
Be bold and brave, for there is nothing tragic
When bright new opportunities arrive
Since all beginnings hold a kind of magic
That shields and helps us all to be alive.
From room to room let’s go, to none retire
For gladly we should leave each one behind us.
The World Spirit does not wish to bind us
But step by step to raise us ever higher.
Scarcely have we made a place our home
When familiarity begins to weigh.
Only those who are prepared to roam
From chains of deadening habit break away.
Perhaps one day even the final knell
Will have yet more new rooms for us in store
And life will go on calling evermore …
And so, my heart, take leave and fare you well!
Against the infamies of life, the best weapons are these: boldness, obstinacy and patience. Boldness strengthens, obstinacy is fun, and patience keeps you calm. Unfortunately, one usually acquires these only late in life, and it is as one withers and fades away that one has most need of them.
From a letter written on
23rd July 1950 to H S
Nostalgia for a lost home is very similar to grieving over one’s childhood and one’s childish beliefs. We should not nourish or nurture such longings or make ourselves ill with them, but we should apply these spiritual powers to the present and to reality. A very large proportion of the human race today is homeless, and by adapting themselves to new places, people and tasks, these folk must try to make a home in the unknown.
From a letter written in February
1960 to a young person
In the midst of overwhelming machinery, we must recapture nature, and after an exhausting day’s work make it possible to stop, and to get to the middle of the centrifuge. Forces that may help to achieve this are nature, music and above all one’s own creative powers.
From a letter written in December
1958 to a reader
Next to the gifts of the mind and of art, those of nature are the only ones that never leave us in the lurch when things get really serious.
From a letter probably written in the
1940s to Erna Klärner