Quote

Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.

Mark Nepo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Matter
Compelled
Feel
Holding
Feels
Breath
Long
Breaths
Way
Telling
Imagine
Withhold
Whatever
Unthinkable
Truth
Spiritually

More quotes by Mark Nepo

Image
Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment--where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels--this moment shows us that what is real is sacred
Mark Nepo
Image
Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.
Mark Nepo
Image
The journey is made easier when we can accept that the process of living is designed for what matters to come through us tenderly.
Mark Nepo
Image
The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
Mark Nepo
Image
If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.
Mark Nepo
Image
Each soul on earth is complete unto itself.
Mark Nepo
Image
I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have.
Mark Nepo
Image
Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us.
Mark Nepo
Image
Truth is a seed hidden in the days until watered by what life brings us.
Mark Nepo
Image
My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire, and I find myself in the presence of love. This has always been so.
Mark Nepo
Image
Joy in what we do is not an added feature it is a sign of deep health.
Mark Nepo
Image
What is not ex-pressed is de-pressed.
Mark Nepo
Image
Listening reminds me how precious it is to be here at all. And so, listening is the first step to peace, both inner peace and the compassion that connects people.
Mark Nepo
Image
We need to meet, embrace and work with what we're given. For what we want and what we're given often serve two different gods. And how we respond to their meeting determines our path.
Mark Nepo
Image
What will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? Tomorrow you could die, but today you are precious and rare and awake. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.
Mark Nepo
Image
The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.
Mark Nepo
Image
The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.
Mark Nepo
Image
There are many ways that we grow, but there are two major ways: We shed what no longer works, or we're broken open. If we're unwilling to shed, then we will be broken open. Through shedding, we are worn down, just as nature is eroded to its beauty. I think that through suffering, human beings are eroded to our beauty.
Mark Nepo
Image
To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
Mark Nepo
Image
Every human has an unfathomable gift that only meeting life head on will reveal.
Mark Nepo