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As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.

Robert Bly

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Robert Bly
Age: 97
Born: 1926
Born: December 23
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Madison
Minnesota
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly
Depression
Older
Sorrow
Able
Find
Nourished
Sad
Distinguish
Gotten

More quotes by Robert Bly

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If we call the young ones, say 10 to 30 years old, 'siblings,' we can see they tend to be naturally ecological. They regard whales and owls as siblings too. That's a great advance.
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I got about half the time I wanted to write poetry. I got about half the time I needed to be a father. So there is something in adulthood that has to do with accepting the half of things, allowing a renunciation of the other half, accepting half a basket instead of a full basket.
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Some men live with an invisible limp, stagger, or drag a leg. Their sons are often angry.
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I think more and more people are recognizing how much adults and elders are actually needed. That's a gift of the sibling society.
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Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
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I want nothing from You but to see You.
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I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.
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The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.
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One could say the higher the spirit goes, the more deeply the soul sinks down into the waters of melancholy and tragedy. Drowning in that water is as sweet as rising.
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Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.
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Every part of you that you do not love will regress and become hostile towards you.
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The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.
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Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars.
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Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
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The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult?
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An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.
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All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.
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We know that the adult in a certain sense has an attitude toward life exactly opposite to the attitude of commercials. Commercials say, 'Your longing for 3.2 beer is very important. Your longing for skin that doesn't have any wrinkles in it, that's very, very, very important.' The adult says, 'No, I've got wrinkles, so what?'
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But our gusty emotions say to me that we have / Tasted heaven many times: these delicacies / Are left over from some larger party.
Robert Bly
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Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine.'
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