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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
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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
Good
Poem
Think
Surprise
Thinking
Poet
Life
Child
Like
Future
Birthed
World
Art
Aliveness
Children
Continually
Work
Bringing
More quotes by 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
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
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
Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss.
David Whyte
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
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
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
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
Art is the act of triggering deep memories, of what it means to be fully human.
David Whyte
I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves.
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
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
I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science.
David Whyte
The greatest tragedy is to live out someone else's life thinking it was your 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
Heartbreak is how we mature... There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak.
David Whyte
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
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
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
We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again
David Whyte
