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" The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body. "
David Whyte
Experience
Body
Great
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" There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation. "
David Whyte
Life
People
Quiet
" If you've given away a sense of your own destiny, you need enormous amounts of hierarchy and protection within the structure to make up for what you've given away. "
David Whyte
Need
Away
Structure
" When I'm working with German audiences, I will call on my Rilke and Goethe in the original. "
David Whyte
German
Call
Original
" We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming, as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due. "
David Whyte
Grow
Giving
Believe
" I don't have an all-embracing vision which people have to buy. I'm simply trying to work with the struggles we all deal with every day while we're trying to live out our personal destinies and make a living at the same time. "
David Whyte
Time
People
Live
" Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation; it's why you never see good poetry in advertising. "
David Whyte
Look
You
Advertising
" There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there. "
David Whyte
Always
Tough
Someone
" Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity. "
David Whyte
Reality
Stop
Trying
" A good poem brims with reflected beauty and even a bracing, beautiful ugliness. At the center of our lives, in the midst of the busyness and the forgetting, is a story that makes sense when everything extraneous has been taken away. "
David Whyte
Beautiful
Sense
Story
" All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment. "
David Whyte
Moment
Silence
Alone
" By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar. "
David Whyte
Interesting
Just
Poetry
" It is difficult to be creative and enthusiastic about anything for which we do not feel affection. "
David Whyte
Creative
Feel
Affection
" In the poetic tradition, the heart's affections are indeed holy, and if organizations are asking for people's hearts and minds, they are asking in a way for their holy and hidden affections at the same time. "
David Whyte
People
Minds
Heart
" We're moving toward the kind of work world which has less security. But we hope it has more creativity and possibility of real engagement. "
David Whyte
Hope
Moving
Work
" Sometimes you have to make a complete disaster of your life in such an epic way that it will be absolutely clear to you what you've been doing. "
David Whyte
Doing
Will
You
" One of the great difficulties as you rise up through an organisation is that your prior competencies are exploded and broken apart by the territory you've been promoted into: the field of human identity. "
David Whyte
Rise
Great
Broken
" Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. "
David Whyte
Honesty
Honesty Is
Truth
" Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. "
David Whyte
Humility
Honesty
Grounded
" It is not the thing you fear that you must deal with: it is the mother of the thing you fear. "
David Whyte
Deal
Thing
Mother
" The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering. "
David Whyte
Much
Asking
Good
" Things have a way of being richer in the end, a product better made, for the circuitous route we take to include all the elements that are necessary for a job well done. "
David Whyte
End
Job
Way
" Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future. "
David Whyte
Art
Future
Life
" I have hundreds of poems memorized. Mostly by others, but also my own. I use the poems when I lead retreats for management groups on topics like creating teams, or coming up with a more entrepreneurial system, or creating more excitement. "
David Whyte
My Own
More
Own
" Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story; we do not know where we are in the story. We do not know who, ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. "
David Whyte
Live
Story
Know
" The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it. "
David Whyte
Against
Great
Poetry
" Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of the same heartbreaks we have traversed. "
David Whyte
Child
Grow
Own
" Sincere regret may be a faculty for paying attention to the future, for sensing a new tide where we missed a previous one, for experiencing timelessness with a grandchild where we neglected a boy of our own. "
David Whyte
Regret
Tide
Boy
" A sure sign of a soul-based workplace is excitement, enthusiasm, real passion; not manufactured passion, but real involvement. And there's very little fear. "
David Whyte
Workplace
Passion
Fear
" Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance. "
David Whyte
Arrogance
Understanding
Lie
" Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. "
David Whyte
Relationship
Wanting
Honesty