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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

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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
Strange
Retreat
Misunderstandin
Actually
Betray
Invulnerable
Rather
Disappear
Foundational
Fear
Sign
Untouchable
Reality
Weakness
Untouched
World
Identity
Betrays
Necessary
Forge
Strength
Abiding

More quotes by David Whyte

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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
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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
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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 life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.
David Whyte
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There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
David Whyte
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Everyone casts a shadow. Everyone has a relationship with the fearful unknown.
David Whyte
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I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.
David Whyte
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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.
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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
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Anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
David Whyte
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Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
David Whyte
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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
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Poetry is a break for freedom.
David Whyte
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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
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To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.
David Whyte
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What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
David Whyte
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There is no house like the house of belonging.
David Whyte
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The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
David Whyte
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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
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We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again
David Whyte
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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