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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 protect us from further harm.

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
Thought
Definition
Give
Definitions
Must
Harm
Giving
Surface
Exactly
Carapace
Necessary
Assiduously
Protect
Shedding
Building
Insecurity

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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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Genius is becoming something you were all along.
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But what would that be like feeling the tide rise out of the numbness inside
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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.
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We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.
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There is no house like the house of belonging.
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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.
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I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.
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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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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.
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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.
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Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
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What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
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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 the world.
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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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I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves.
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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.
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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.
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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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