Being an artist

I just stole a moment from your enjoying the beauty of Rilke's prose.

"Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast"

From his Letters to a Young Poet
Viareggio, near Pisa
April 23, 1903

Its been many years since my first reading but I clearly remember how it moved me then. I can never overstate the enduring appeal of this quote.