"Letters To A Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke (published 1929)
Usually, when someone directly asks me what my favorite book is, I say that I haven’t yet found it, but I love many. This is no longer true. Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is now my favorite book, and although I am not an artist, reading it compelled me in such a way that other books have only made me contemplate. Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet encouraged me to change; my opinions, my fears, and my actions. Rilke asks Kappus, the poet he is writing to, not to neglect his emotions, but to feel them, however wonderful or painful, and to turn “inward” in his search for truth (first letter). Rilke also reminds Kappus, in another letter, that beauty can be found in everything – such as, if one had an unhappy childhood, there are things, perhaps even things special to a certain individual, to be found in memory that, if missed or searched for, will bring peace and humility (sixth letter): “try to be close to Things; they will not abandon you; and the nights are still the...