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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.

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
Gift
Needed
Society
Actually
Much
Sibling
Think
Elders
Thinking
Recognizing
People
Adults

More quotes by Robert Bly

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There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.
Robert Bly
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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.
Robert Bly
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Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
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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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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A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this.
Robert Bly
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Poetry keeps longing alive.
Robert Bly
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Some men live with an invisible limp, stagger, or drag a leg. Their sons are often angry.
Robert Bly
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Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person.
Robert Bly
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You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.
Robert Bly
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What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have.
Robert Bly
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The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.
Robert Bly
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Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.
Robert Bly
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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?'
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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The sibling society is the flattening out of the previously democratic society.
Robert Bly
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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.
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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The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed.
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