David Whyte Quotes

Through the radical undoing and debilitation of repeated pain we are reacquainted with the essentialities of place and time and existence itself; in deep pain we have energy only for what we can do wholeheartedly and then, only within a narrow range of motion, metaphorically or physically, from tying our shoelace to holding the essential core conversations that are reciprocal and reinforcing within the close-in circle of those we love. Pain teaches us a fine economy, in movement, in the heart's affections, in what we ask of ourselves and eventually in what we ask in others. ~ David Whyte

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 ~ David Whyte

Heartbreak is how we mature ... There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak. ~ David Whyte

We are each a river with a particular abiding character, but we show radically different aspects of our self according to the territory through which we travel. ~ David Whyte

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. ~ David Whyte

Enough.
These few words are enough
If not these few words, this breath
If not this breath, this sitting here
This opening to the life we have refused again and again
Until now
Until now. ~ David Whyte

The rich flow of creativity, innovation, and almost musical complexity we are looking for in a fulfilled work life cannot be reached through trying or working harder. The medium for the soul, it seems, must be the message. The river down which we raft is made up of the same substance as the great sea of our destination. It is an ever-moving, firsthand creative engagement with life and with others that completes itself simply by being itself. This kind of approach must be seen as the "great art" of working in order to live, of remembering what is most important in the order of priorities and what place we occupy in a much greater story than the one our job description defines. Other "great arts," such as poetry, can remind and embolden us to this end. Whatever we choose to do, the stakes are very high. With a little more care, a little more courage, and, above all, a little more soul, our lives can be so easily discovered and celebrated in work, and not, as now, squandered and lost in its shadow. ~ David Whyte

Read and admire, but then go back to first principles and ask the question yourself, in your own way. Dare to disagree. ~ David Whyte

Start close in,
don't take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don't want to take. ~ David Whyte

We're moving toward the kind of work world which has less security. But we hope it has more creativity and possibility of real engagement. ~ David Whyte

To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life; fully experienced, it turns our eyes, attentive and alert, to a future possibly lived better than our past. ~ David Whyte

Sometimes, you need the ocean light,
and colors you've never seen before
painted through an evening sky.

Sometimes you need your God
to be a simple invitation
not a telling word of wisdom.

Sometimes you need only the first shyness
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,

so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.

And then there are times you want to be
brought to ground by touch
and touch alone.

To know those arms around you
and to make your home in the world
just by being wanted.

To see eyes looking back at you,
as eyes should see you at last,

seeing you, as you always wanted to be seen,
seeing you, as you yourself
had always wanted to see the world. ~ David Whyte

Art is the act of triggering deep memories of what it means to be fully human. ~ David Whyte

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light. ~ David Whyte

We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember again as our own. ~ David Whyte

Humiliation is mostly something we try to avoid, but it is something more often, all for the best, in retrospect. There is a lovely root to the word, the Latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returned to the ground of our being. Any fancy ideas we have about ourselves are shriven away by the reality of the moment. We come to earth with a thump. It may be a narrow piece of ground, but at least it is real and at least it is our own. ~ David Whyte

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 or what they want. ~ David Whyte

The greatest luxury of having money should be not having to worry about it. ~ David Whyte

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from. ~ David Whyte

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have. ~ David Whyte

But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside ~ David Whyte

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up on all other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. ~ David Whyte

Solace is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation, through the door of pain and difficulty, to the depth of suffering and simultaneous beauty in the world that the strategic mind by itself cannot grasp nor make sense of. ~ David Whyte

There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there. ~ David Whyte

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born. ~ David Whyte

A true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. ~ David Whyte

A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain. ~ David Whyte

Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story; we do not know where we are in the story. We do not know who, ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. ~ David Whyte

One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true - it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us. We are used to the prison however, we have indeed fitted cushions and armchairs and made it comfortable and we have locked the door from the inside.

The imprisoning story I identified by the time the entree was served was one I had told myself for a long time. "In order to write I need peace and quiet and an undisturbed place far from others or the possibility of being disturbed. I knew however, that if I wanted to enter the next creative stage, something had to change; I simply did not have enough free space between traveling, speaking and being a good father and husband to write what I wanted to write. The key in the lock turned surprisingly easy, I simply said to myself, "What if I acted as if it wasn't true any more, what if it had be ~ David Whyte

But solace also asks us very direct and forceful questions. Firstly, how will you bear the inevitable loss that is coming to you? And how will you endure it through the years? And above all, how will you shape a life equal to and as beautiful and as astonishing as a world that can birth you, bring you into the light and then just as you were beginning to understand it, take you away? ~ David Whyte

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. ~ David Whyte

The art form has to do with the mystery and the hidden invitation that's in the room. And that's when the magic happens, that's when the deep silence emerges to the surprise of all the attentively listening ears. In a way, you're following that silence. You go where the silence is deepest. ~ David Whyte

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. ~ David Whyte

To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter's face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. ~ David Whyte

Pain is the first proper step to real compassion; it can be a foundation for understanding all those who struggle with their existence. Experiencing real pain ourselves, our moral superiority comes to an end; we stop urging others to get with the program, to get their act together or to sharpen up, and start to look for the particular form of debilitation, visible or invisible that every person struggles to overcome. In pain, we suddenly find our understanding and compassion engaged as to why others may find it hard to fully participate. ~ David Whyte

But then we always knew heaven would be a desperate place. Everything you desired coming in one fearful moment to greet you. ~ David Whyte

When I'm working with German audiences, I will call on my Rilke and Goethe in the original. ~ David Whyte

The ultimate lesson is that there is no immunity, no matter our age or the size of our retirement account, from going through constant cycles of integration and disintegration in which we are humbled and hopefully set to rights with the world again. ~ David Whyte

The great measure of human maturation is the increasing understanding that we move through life in the blink of an eye; that we are not long with the privilege of having eyes to see, ears to hear, a voice with which to speak and arms to put round a loved one; that we are simply passing through. ~ David Whyte

The moment you've uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile, you're already turning towards home. ~ David Whyte

To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow our selves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self ... the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation ... ~ David Whyte

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 own life than succeed at someone else's. ~ David Whyte

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. ~ David Whyte

And after you were up, when the light had come and the moon had gone, you found the path again waiting through the open window, the faces at the table gazing with you, as you sat with your coffee, silently letting the sense of rest seat home, the body ready to walk, in rhythm and in rhyme, with the given, unspoken source. ~ David Whyte

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds Except the one in which you belong. ~ David Whyte

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest.
It's wholeheartedness. ~ David Whyte

Everyone casts a shadow. Everyone has a relationship with the fearful unknown. ~ David Whyte

If I don't have time for the writing, it's because I'm not making that time. It's really just a question of whether you want to or not, whether you feel you deserve to write or not. ~ David Whyte

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 ... ~ David Whyte

Ambition left to itself, like a Rupert Murdoch, always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. We find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey. ~ David Whyte

Sometimes you have to make a complete disaster of your life in such an epic way that it will be absolutely clear to you what you've been doing. ~ David Whyte

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us. ~ David Whyte

Nostalgia is not indulgence. Nostalgia tells us we are in the presence of imminent revelation, about to break through the present structures held together by the way we have remembered: something we thought we understood but that we are now about to fully understand, something already lived but not fully lived, issuing not from our future but from something already experienced; something that was important, but something to which we did not grant importance enough, something now wanting to be lived again, at the depth to which it first invited us but which we originally refused. Nostalgia is not an immersion in the past, nostalgia is the first annunciation that the past as we know it is coming to an end. ~ David Whyte

Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity. ~ David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others,
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. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living, 
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God. ~ David Whyte

Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat. ~ David Whyte

Poetry: Language against which we have no defences. ~ David Whyte

We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming, as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due. ~ David Whyte

There is no house like the house of belonging. ~ David Whyte

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present, and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature. The attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not, and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability, we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential title and conversational foundations of our identity. ~ David Whyte

I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. ~ David Whyte

No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine. ~ David Whyte

Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. ~ David Whyte

What you plan is too small for you to live. ~ David Whyte

We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment and quickly busy ourselves. ~ David Whyte

As human beings we have this immediate gateway - you've just to articulate exactly the way that you're exiled, exactly the way that you don't belong, exactly the way that you can't love, exactly the way that you can't move ... and you're on your way again. You're on your way home. If you can just say exactly the way that you're imprisoned - the door swings open. ~ David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. ~ David Whyte

Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown. ~ David Whyte

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 good poetry in advertising. ~ David Whyte

I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science. ~ David Whyte

There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation. ~ David Whyte

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. ~ David Whyte

Poetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends. ~ David Whyte

Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom. ~ David Whyte

The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement "the arrogance of belonging," and claims that it is an absolutely vital privilege to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

we have so many allies in this world, including just the color blue in the sky, ~ David Whyte

For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster. For the soul, it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill, and a condition it has been secretly engineering for years. ~ David Whyte

Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made. ~ David Whyte

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. ~ David Whyte

The greatest tragedy is to live out someone else's life thinking it was your own. ~ David Whyte

To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. ~ David Whyte

THE OPENING OF EYES After R. S. Thomas That day I saw beneath dark clouds, the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before, life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversing, speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. ~ David Whyte

You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. ~ David Whyte

The workplace needs the poet's gift. But the poet also needs to be educated about the workplace. You're not just coming in to do your art, you're actually making yourself vulnerable. You yourself are not God's gift to truth. You have to hazard yourself in their world, especially because you're inviting people to do the same. It's all about become visible, becoming incarnate, becoming here and now and yet with our eyes on a future horizon; holding the conversation you were meant to hold. ~ David Whyte

The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it. ~ David Whyte

I don't have an all-embracing vision which people have to buy. I'm simply trying to work with the struggles we all deal with every day while we're trying to live out our personal destinies and make a living at the same time. ~ David Whyte

A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future. ~ David Whyte

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving. ~ David Whyte

We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a marriage or to a cause, exactly what kind of love we are involved with. When we demand a certain specific kind of reciprocation before the revelation has flowered completely we find our selves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but that did not meet our initial and too specific expectations. Feeling bereft we take our identity as one who is disappointed in love, our almost proud disappointment preventing us from seeing the lack of reciprocation from the person or the situation as simply a difficult invitation into a deeper and as yet unrecognizable form of affection.

The act of loving itself, always becomes a path of humble apprenticeship, not only in following its difficult way and discovering its different forms of humility and beautiful abasement but strangely, through its fierce introduction to all its many astonishing and different forms, where we are asked continually and against our will, to give in so many different ways, without knowing exactly, or in what way, when or how, the mysterious gift will be returned. ~ David Whyte

The lost sense that we play out our lives as part of a greater story ~ David Whyte

Walking the roads is enough today, I'll follow the dark line of receding sun ~ David Whyte

To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others. ~ David Whyte

What I have not seen
or failed to see
I leave as a gift. ~ David Whyte

Genius is becoming something you were all along. ~ David Whyte

The tragedy with velocity as the answer to complexity is that, after awhile, you cannot see or comprehend anything that is not traveling at the same speed you are. And you actually start to feel disturbed by people who have a sense of restfulness to their existence. ~ David Whyte

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. ~ David Whyte

The frail, vulnerable sounds of which we are capable seem to be essential to a later ability to roar like a lion without scaring everyone to death. ~ David Whyte

The truth about our own modest contribution might immobilize us: much easier then, to tell ourselves a story about how much we make our own reality. ~ David Whyte

In real pain we have no other choice but to learn to ask for help and on a daily basis. Pain tells us we belong and cannot live forever alone or in isolation. Pain makes us understand reciprocation. ~ David Whyte

In this high place it is as simple as this, Leave everything you know behind. Step toward the cold surface, say the old prayer of rough love and open both arms. Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished, there, in the cold light reflecting pure snow, the true shape of your own face. David Whyte, "Tilicho Lake" Conservatives ~ Richard Rohr