David Whyte Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old David Whyte quotes, David Whyte sayings, and David Whyte proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

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
To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. David Whyte
Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born. David Whyte
Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves. David Whyte
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
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. 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
To look for solace is to learn to ask fiercer and more exquisitely pointed questions, questions that reshape our identities and our bodies and our relation to others. David Whyte
To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstanding of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear. David Whyte
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. David Whyte
Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance. David Whyte
Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. David Whyte
Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. David Whyte
The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognised through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what only looks as if it is happening now, and what is about to occur. David Whyte
Maturity is not a static arrived platform, a golden epoch from where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but the dissolution of living elemental frontiers between what has happened, what is happening now, and the consequences of our passt; first imagined anew, and then lived into the waiting future. David Whyte
Maturity is the time when these tidal forces meet and break apart our life, making one life out of our regrets, our self-compassion, and our forgiveness forged into a future made real by a radical change in our behaviour. David Whyte
Maturity is the breakdown of elemental frontiers, between different epochs of our life, between life and death, between the part of us that has been a fine, upstanding citizen and the darker, helpless parts of us that have caused harm and damage. David Whyte
Real maturity can only be sustained by real silence, by a daily discipline of silence and an inhabitation of spaciousness, a foundational giving away. David Whyte
Maturity is the discipline of giving up and giving away, to see what is left and what is real. David Whyte
Maturity calls us to risk ourselves as much as we did in our immaturity, but for a bigger picture, a larger horizon; for a powerfully generous outward incarnation of our inward qualities and not for gains that make us smaller, even in the winning. David Whyte
Maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral; a living, conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit, and the one - if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and, even, here enough - just, astonishingly, about to occur. David Whyte
Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education. David Whyte
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. David Whyte
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. David Whyte