David Whyte Quotes
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The severest test of work today, is not of our strategies, but of our imaginations and identities.
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The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
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There is no house like the house of belonging.
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and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love
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Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
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Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete's quick but abstract ability to let go... But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.
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Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.
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Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through it s black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.
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If in your mind it was possible to take a year's sabbatical from work to reassess your life, what would you do and where would you go?
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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 everyone else remember, too.
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Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
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Shyness means you are in the hallway of a greater presence. You just don't know how to take the conversation another step. It's a lovely indication.
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You'll always love the person, if you're sensible. But you get a lot of people, especially in divorces and separations, doing a lot of damage to themselves, because they can't figure out that they actually still love this person, but not in their original way.
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The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.
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Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
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The moment you’ve uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile, you’re already turning towards home.
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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 just below the radar.
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To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.
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I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.
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What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
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The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
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What we see as risk and foolhardiness on the outside, can seem more like constant cohesive drive on the inside that holds to priorities that cannot be discerned by others, because they reside in far too private a chamber of personal experience to be shared easily. To dare everything is not necessarily trouble, but often the opposite. To have faith in a foundation you have discovered in life and which, though it is difficult to describe even to yourself, you refuse to relinquish.
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Everyone casts a shadow. Everyone has a relationship with the fearful unknown.
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Genius is becoming something you were all along.
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Poetry is a break for freedom.
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The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears
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Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements.
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To seek out beauty in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.
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What we strive for in perfection is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire what disturbs and then nourishes has everything we need.
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Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.
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