Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

A Must-Read for the Reflective, Creative, Old Souls

For the artist, the romantic, the creative, the soulful, the lover, the highly sensitive — this book is a timeless masterpiece of wisdom, comfort, validation, and inspiration.

It’s especially poignant for those on their “coming of age” path, and I return to Rilke here time and time again. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer or a poet — if you’re a reflective person on the jagged and uncertain path of knowing thyself, this book is like a warm hug. Like a friend who understands you and puts words to feelings you’ve felt deeply but could never quite name.

It’s a thin book and a “short” read, but it’s one you’ll come back to over and over, whenever you need it.

One of the classic passages:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”