Works of (self expression) are of an infinite loneliness
And with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.
Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them.
Consider yourself and your feeling right every time
With regard to every such argumentation, discussion
Or introduction; if you are wrong after all,
the natural growth of your inner life will lead you
Slowly and with time to other insights.
Leave to your opinions their own quiet
Undisturbed development, which,
Like all progress, must come from deep within
And cannot be pressed or hurried by anything.
Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.

To let each impression and each germ of a feeling
Come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark,
In the inexpressible, the unconscious,
Beyond the reach of one's own intelligence,
And await with deep humility and patience
The birth-hour of a new clarity:
That alone is living the artist's life…

There is here no measuring with time,
No year matters, and ten years are nothing.
Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting,
But ripening like the tree which does not
Force its sap and stands confidant
In the storms of spring without the fear
That after them may come no summer.
It does come.
But it only comes to the patient…
Patience is everything!

- Rainer Maria Rilke