Quote

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

Robert Bly

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Bly
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: December 23
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Madison
Minnesota
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly
Call
Certain
Men
Descend
Tragedies
Insist
Depths
Depth
Tragedy

More quotes by Robert Bly

Image
One man wrote me, saying, 'You know who you are? You're nothing but a Captain Bly pissing up a drainpipe!'
Robert Bly
Image
And why shouldn't the miraculous, / Caught on this earth, visit / The old man alone in his hut?
Robert Bly
Image
The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.
Robert Bly
Image
An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.
Robert Bly
Image
Some men live with an invisible limp, stagger, or drag a leg. Their sons are often angry.
Robert Bly
Image
Siblings tend not to care much about boundaries and borders. Having worn each others' T-shirts, it's unlikely that they'd go to war over a border.
Robert Bly
Image
What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have.
Robert Bly
Image
Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.
Robert Bly
Image
It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.
Robert Bly
Image
The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.
Robert Bly
Image
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
Image
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.'
Robert Bly
Image
In some Mayan villages they even have a stage beyond the elder that they call the Echo Person. They say that when an Echo Person, whether a man or a woman, speaks, the words echo both in this world and in the other world. That's why they are called Echo People.
Robert Bly
Image
You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.
Robert Bly
Image
Before I was a parent I was struck by Rilke, who, as you know, didn't go to his daughter's wedding because he was writing a poem that day. That was the ideal for artistic behavior in 1950. That's the way I wanted to live.
Robert Bly
Image
Poetry keeps longing alive.
Robert Bly
Image
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
Image
I think more and more people are recognizing how much adults and elders are actually needed. That's a gift of the sibling society.
Robert Bly
Image
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
Image
There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.
Robert Bly