Quote

There is a lovely root to the word humiliation - from the latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returning to the ground of our being.

David Whyte

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Whyte
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: September 21
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Poet
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Marrickville
New South Wales
Australia
Word
Lovely
Effect
Humus
Humility
Humiliated
Roots
Returning
Ground
Humiliation
Meaning
Root
Pride
Latin
Effects
Soil

More quotes by David Whyte

Image
Genius is becoming something you were all along.
David Whyte
Image
What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
David Whyte
Image
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
Image
Poetry is a break for freedom.
David Whyte
Image
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
Image
To give generously but appropriately and then, most difficult of all, and as the full apotheosis of the art, with feeling, in the moment and spontaneously, has always been recognized as one of the greatest of human qualities.
David Whyte
Image
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
David Whyte
Image
To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.
David Whyte
Image
The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
David Whyte
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.
David Whyte
Image
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 participation and witness to the difficulty of living.
David Whyte
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
David Whyte
Image
To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
David Whyte
Image
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
Image
There is no house like the house of belonging.
David Whyte