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David Whyte

David Whyte Quotes

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Famous David Whyte Quotes

“What we recognize and applaud as honesty and transparency in an individual is actually the humble demeanor of the apprentice, someone paying extreme attention, to themselves, to others, to life, to the next step, which they may survive or they may not; someone who does not have all the answers but who is attempting to learn what they can, about themselves and those with whom they share the journey, someone like everyone else, wondering what they and their society are about to turn into. We are neither what we think we are nor entirely what we are about to become, we are neither purely individual nor fully a creature of our community, but an act of becoming that can never be held in place by a false form of nomenclature.”

ChangeAttentionLearningHonestyBecomingSelf KnowledgeTransparency
Book:Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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“Self-knowledge is not clarity or transparency or knowing how everything works, self-knowledge is a fiercely attentive form of humility and thankfulness, a sense of the privilege of a particular form of participation, coming to know the way we hold the conversation of life and perhaps, above all, the miracle that there is a particular something rather than an abstracted nothing and we are a very particular part of that particular something.”

LifeAttentionHumilityPrivilegeSelf KnowledgeParticipationThankfulness
Book:Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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“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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsInspirationalKindRealFacesLostRealizingPayAttentionKnowingDependsPay AttentionWildernessWhere You AreNot KnowingCliffsYou Think You KnowBlizzardKnowing What To Do
Book:The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
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“Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements.”

IfsMomentsDesireAttentionPathFeetFieldsPossibilityConversationDemandElementsOceanStonesConstantSeriesBreathingAtmosphereSurroundCrossingsHeadingsStepping Stones
Author:David Whyte
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