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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.

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
Sweet
Higher
Sinks
Goes
Drowning
Water
Waters
Spirit
Melancholy
Soul
Rising
Deeply
Tragedy

More quotes by Robert Bly

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Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person.
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I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.
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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.
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It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.
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An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.
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Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.
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The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.
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Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison they turn to poetry.
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Poetry keeps longing alive.
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I knew this friendship with myself couldn’t last forever.
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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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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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I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.
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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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The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.
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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.
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We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.
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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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
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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