David Whyte Quotes

What if the world is holding its breath - waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.

We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember again as our own.

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest. It's wholeheartedness.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

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.

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.

Anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. Pay attention to everything in the world as if it's alive. Realize everything has its own discrete existence outside your story. By doing this, you open to gifts and lessons that the world has to give you.

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

It's my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart...so it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, 'Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?'

Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

Enough. These few words are enough If not these few words, this breath If not this breath, this sitting here This opening to the life we have refused again and again Until now Until now.

As human beings we have this immediate gateway - you’ve just to articulate exactly the way that you’re exiled, exactly the way that you don’t belong, exactly the way that you can’t love, exactly the way that you can’t move ... and you’re on your way again. You’re on your way home. If you can just say exactly the way that you’re imprisoned - the door swings open.

Heartbreak is our indication of sincerity: in a love relationship, in a work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is just as much an essence and emblem of care as the spiritual athlete's quick but abstract ability to let go... But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

I believe that human beings are desperate, always, to belong to something larger than themselves.

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.

The greatest tragedy is to live out someone else's life thinking it was your own.