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
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
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
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
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
To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible – that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins. – David Whyte
A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain. – David Whyte
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
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
It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living. – David Whyte
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
Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation. – David Whyte
The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body. – David Whyte
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. – David Whyte
A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want. – David Whyte
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
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
A soul-based workplace asks things of me that I didn’t even know I had. It’s constantly telling me that I belong to something large in the world. – David Whyte
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
It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life. – David Whyte
I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves. – David Whyte
Poetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends. – David Whyte
There’s a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from. – David Whyte
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
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