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The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.

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
Renunciation
Older
Beauty
Word

More quotes by Robert Bly

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People tend to take stories literally these days.
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We did not come to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, Trees that start again.
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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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I use the phrase 'sibling society' to suggest a culture fundamentally without fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, or ancestors. The thinking is horizontal.
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There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.
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The sibling society is the flattening out of the previously democratic society.
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A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
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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.
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Poetry keeps longing alive.
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Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.
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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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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.
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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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The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends.
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You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.
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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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Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.
Robert Bly
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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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The deeper question... is not whether ancient religious forms can reform... but whether new forms of nature-related spirituality might emerge.
Robert Bly
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Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.
Robert Bly