David Whyte Life Quotations

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.

Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves.

There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation.

Art is the act of triggering deep memories, of what it means to be fully human.

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.

To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life; fully experienced, it turns our eyes, attentive and alert, to a future possibly lived better than our past.