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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
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More quotes by David Whyte
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
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
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
The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
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 courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.
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
There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
David Whyte
We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.
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
When I recite poems onstage, I put myself into the very personal struggle and it grants tremendous perspective. At the same time you get another perspective on the poem you're reciting.
David Whyte
What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
David Whyte
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
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.
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
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
To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
David Whyte
The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears
David Whyte
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
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