Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Personal
Gain
Judgments
Knowledge
Gains
Conclusions
Space
Amazing
Spaces
Learn
Hearts
Paradox
Underside
Become
Minds
Assumption
Storehouse
Heart
Judgment
Fill
Harden
Kind
Build
Conclusion
Insights
Mind
Capacity
Insight
Assumptions

More quotes by Mark Nepo

Image
The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind.
Mark Nepo
Image
We travel so far only to land where we are. We imagine other lives, only to meet who we are. We seek out love in special ways, only to find everyone is special. Humbly, we can't avoid this journey.
Mark Nepo
Image
For listening to the stories of others ... is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.
Mark Nepo
Image
I would rather be fooled than not believe.
Mark Nepo
Image
Try as we do to resist what we're given, this is the only doorway to truth. We waste too much time and energy denying or fighting where we find ourselves.
Mark Nepo
Image
When the sweet ache of being alive, lodged between who you are and who you will be, is awakened, befriend this moment. It will guide you. Its sweetness is what holds you. Its ache is what moves you on.
Mark Nepo
Image
When we deny what comes through us, it defines us. When we honestly face what comes through us, then who we are grows.
Mark Nepo
Image
The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.
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
To listen also means to stay in relationship, the central challenge of our time, and this requires us to constantly minimize whatever stands between us and life.
Mark Nepo
Image
Accepting what we're given is a practice in being present to everything beyond us that lets us become intimate with the nature of life.
Mark Nepo
Image
Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth.
Mark Nepo
Image
We need experience to release what matters.
Mark Nepo
Image
When wiggling through a hole the world looks different than when scrubbed clean by the wiggle and looking back.
Mark Nepo
Image
To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
Mark Nepo
Image
If we are to access the resources of life, we must listen with our common heart to the cries of the world.
Mark Nepo
Image
In truth, the more we lean into life, the more we authentically interact with the world, the brighter our flame.
Mark Nepo
Image
Joy in what we do is not an added feature it is a sign of deep health.
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
A successful creative expression is one in which the person who has expressed it was transformed for having encountered it
Mark Nepo