Quote

The door to the soul is unlocked you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.

Robert Bly

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Robert Bly
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: December 23
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Madison
Minnesota
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly
Soul
Obeys
Need
Intended
Needs
Spoken
Door
Fronts
Front
Doors
Please
Unlocked

More quotes by Robert Bly

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Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings.
Robert Bly
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An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.
Robert Bly
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Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
Robert Bly
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Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.
Robert Bly
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Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.
Robert Bly
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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?
Robert Bly
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If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.
Robert Bly
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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.
Robert Bly
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Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
Robert Bly
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What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.
Robert Bly
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The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed.
Robert Bly
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Every breath taken in by the man Who loves, and the woman who loves, Goes to fill the water tank Where the spirit horses drink.
Robert Bly
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To me, the hope lies in adults forgetting about their retirement and turning toward the adolescents and helping pull the adolescents over that mysterious line drawn on the ground into adulthood. If we don't do that, the adolescents are going to stay exactly where they are for the next 30 or 40 years.
Robert Bly
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The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.
Robert Bly
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Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.
Robert Bly
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In the society that has replaced the paternalistic society, women are able to develop their independent and social energies much more. That is good.
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.
Robert Bly
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It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
Robert Bly
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I want nothing from You but to see You.
Robert Bly
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By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.
Robert Bly