Rainer Maria Rilke on Advertising.

I'm lucky enough to have some very smart--even profound--friends. This morning I had a conversation about many things with the profoundest of all.

All of a sudden and from absolutely out of the blue, he trotted out a reference Rilke,
the great late 19th/early 20th century poet and writer. Rilke, even at his most obtuse, probably
has more to say than your GCD or even ECD, so I re-read some excerpts of his "Letters to a Young Poet." I've pasted it here so you can all shake your heads and wonder how I actually managed to reference Rilke in my blog.

"People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it."