David Whyte Quotes

64 quotes in 928 categories

• Poetry is a break for freedom.
• It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present…
• Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see…
• All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with…
• Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of…
• A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.
• A soul-based workplace asks things of me that I didn't even know I had. It's constantly telling me that I belong to something large in…
• I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves.
• The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.
• The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.
• There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
• A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are…
• A sure sign of a soul-based workplace is excitement, enthusiasm, real passion; not manufactured passion, but real involvement. And there's very little fear.
• By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is…
• Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate…
• Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
• The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and, in remembering, helps…
• Shedding the carapace we have been building so assiduously on the surface, we must by definition give up exactly what we thought was necessary to…
• Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its…
• What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

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