Whyte Quotes & Sayings

An educated woman carries herself with a humble, quiet grace, yet her presence is powerful. She does not feel as thou she needs to act masculine to exude authority and power. — Daniel Whyte III

People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a "U-turn," or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . . Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality. — Jamie Whyte

Every kind of prayer, not intercessory prayer only, which is the highest kind of prayer, but all prayer, from the lowest kind to the highest, is impossible in a life of known and allowed sin. — Alexander Whyte

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. — David Whyte

Everyone casts a shadow. Everyone has a relationship with the fearful unknown. — 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

Success is measured not in how much we accomplish, but in how much we overcome. — Mary Whyte

For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster. For the soul, it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill, and a condition it has been secretly engineering for years. — David Whyte

Society is itself an education in the extrovert values, and rarely has there been a society that has preached them so hard. No man is an island, but how John Donne would writhe to hear how often, and for what reasons, the thought is so tiresomely repeated. — William H. Whyte

One small thing
I've learned these years,
how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world. — David Whyte

Therefore, at any time of life, follow your own questions; don't mistake other people's questions for your own. — David Whyte

If I don't have time for the writing, it's because I'm not making that time. It's really just a question of whether you want to or not, whether you feel you deserve to write or not. — David Whyte

We're moving toward the kind of work world which has less security. But we hope it has more creativity and possibility of real engagement. — David Whyte

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body. — David Whyte

What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people. — William H. Whyte

And then, what is grace? Grace is love. But grace is not love simply, and purely, and alone. Grace and love are, in their innermost essence, one and the same thing. — Alexander Whyte

Walking the roads is enough today, I'll follow the dark line of receding sun — David Whyte

If you find your life of prayer to be always so short, and so easy, and so spiritual, as to be without cost and strain and sweat to you, you may depend upon it, you have not yet begun to pray. — Alexander Whyte

The ultimate lesson is that there is no immunity, no matter our age or the size of our retirement account, from going through constant cycles of integration and disintegration in which we are humbled and hopefully set to rights with the world again. — David Whyte

Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity. — David Whyte

If you would move me with your preaching, or with your praying, or with your singing, first be moved yourself. — Alexander Whyte

Poetry is a break for freedom. — David Whyte

We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment and quickly busy ourselves. — David Whyte

To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow our selves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self ... the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation ... — David Whyte

Remember, Reilly, gossip is just people's insecurity and fear of what they don't really understand," Eilam said. "It is unconsciously propagated to feed their egos."
"Doesn't it ever bother you?", Reilly asked as he pulled the top off his yogurt.
"I've lived too long to put any stock in the external judgements of others,or to take anything personally. — S.L. Whyte

Whyte's work remains a living and usable handbook for improving our cities, our countryside, and our lives. — Nathan Glazer

Absent the edge, we drown in numbness. — David Whyte

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high. — David Whyte

feeling fatally drawn to him as a ship to the rock on which it will dash itself to pieces, — Carolyn Whyte

Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance. — David Whyte

Admit sin, and you banish prayer. But, on the other hand, entertain, and encourage, and practice prayer, and sin will sooner or later flee before it. — Alexander Whyte

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds Except the one in which you belong. — David Whyte

I wish I had my beta-blockers handy.
[Comment when told that he had won a Nobel prize, referring to the drug he discovered for the treatment of heart disease.] — James Whyte Black

Now I had a mate and a pal. All I needed to complete the Kat Friendship Club was a buddy! — June Whyte

We name mostly in order to control but what is worth loving does not want to be held within the bounds of too narrow a calling. In many ways love has already named us before we can even begin to speak back to it, before we can utter the right words or understand what has happened to us or is continuing to happen to us: an invitation to the most difficult art of all, to love without naming at all. — David Whyte

Happiness is a rare cosmetic. — George Whyte-Melville

There is a lovely root to the word humiliation - from the latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returning to the ground of our being. — David Whyte

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. — David Whyte

It is not the thing you fear that you must deal with, it is the mother of the thing you fear. The very thing that has given birth to the nightmare. — David Whyte

What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. — David Whyte

Lion sounds that have not grown from the mouse may exude naked power ... but cannot convey any wisdom or understanding ... The initial steps on the path to courageous speech then are the first tentative steps into the parts of us that cannot speak. — David Whyte

Solace is what we must look for when the mind cannot bear the pain, the loss or the suffering that eventually touches every life and every endeavour; when longing does not come to fruition in a form we can recognize, when people we know and love disappear, when hope must take a different form than the one we have shaped for it. — David Whyte

In this high place it is as simple as this, Leave everything you know behind. Step toward the cold surface, say the old prayer of rough love and open both arms. Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished, there, in the cold light reflecting pure snow, the true shape of your own face. David Whyte, "Tilicho Lake" Conservatives — Richard Rohr

People do not always argue because they misunderstand one another, they argue because they hold different goals. — William H. 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

The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and, in remembering, helps everyone else remember, too. — David Whyte

Cynicism, like gullibility, is a symptom of underdeveloped critical faculties. — Jamie 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

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. — David Whyte

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society - and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding. — William H. Whyte

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

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

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

The art form has to do with the mystery and the hidden invitation that's in the room. And that's when the magic happens, that's when the deep silence emerges to the surprise of all the attentively listening ears. In a way, you're following that silence. You go where the silence is deepest. — 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

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

If you've given away a sense of your own destiny, you need enormous amounts of hierarchy and protection within the structure to make up for what you've given away. — David Whyte

No prayer!-No faith!-No Christ in the heart. Little prayer!-Little faith!-Little Christ in the heart. Increasing prayer!-Increasing faith!-Increasing Christ in the heart!. Much prayer!-Much faith!-Much Christ in the heart! Praying always!-Faith always!-Christ always! — Alexander Whyte

What I have not seen
or failed to see
I leave as a gift. — David Whyte

The true signature and perhaps even the miracle of human love is helplessness, and all the more miraculous because it is a helplessness which we wittingly or unwittingly choose; in our love of a child, a partner, a work, or a road we have to take against the odds. — David Whyte

[There is no shortage of scientific talent.] But [I am] much less optimistic about the managerial vision [of the pharmaceutical industry] to catalyse these talents to deliver the results we all want. — James Whyte Black

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. — David Whyte

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire
what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need. — David Whyte

I love the best of all the traditions. My discipline is the take-no-prisoners language of good poetry, but a language that actually frees us from prejudice, no matter what religion or political persuasion they are. I try to create a river-like discourse. The river is not political, it's not on your side or against you. It's an invitation into the onward flow. — David Whyte

No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine. — 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

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. — David Whyte

I knew even then, the first time that I saw you, that I loved you. — Jack Whyte

Heartbreak is how we mature ... There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak. — David Whyte

In further institutionalizing the great power of the majority, we are making the individual come to distrust himself. We are giving him a rationalization for the unconscious urging to find an authority that would resolve the burdens of free choice. We are tempting him to reinterpret the group pressures as a release, authority as freedom, and that this quest assumes a moral guise makes it only the more poignant. — William H. Whyte

When you sleep in your cloak there 's no lodging to pay. — George Whyte-Melville

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 misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear. — David Whyte

What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. — 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

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

There is no house like the house of belonging. — David Whyte

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. — David Whyte

Thought is borne of failure. — Lancelot Law Whyte

And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love — 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

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

The probability of having some problem with the children is greater when the mother is over the age of 35 but I've never heard anyone suggest that anyone over the age of 35 shouldn't be allowed to have sex. — Jamie Whyte

Of alle the floures in the mede, Than love I most these floures whyte and rede, Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun ... Til that myn herte dye ... That wel by reson men hit calle may The 'dayesye' or elles the 'ye of day,' The emperice and flour of floures alle. I pray to god that faire mot she falle, And alle that loven floures, for hir sake! — Geoffrey Chaucer

Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom. — David Whyte

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

Populists of the Trump variety and the Sanders variety (who are not in fact as different as they seem) are not wrong to see these corporate cosmopolitans as members of a separate, distinct, and thriving class with economic and social interests of its own. Those interests overlap only incidentally and occasionally with those of movement conservatives - and overlap even less as the new nationalist-populist strain in the Republican party comes to dominate the debate on questions such as trade and immigration. Under attack from both the right and the left, free enterprise and free trade increasingly are ideas without a party. As William H. Whyte discovered back in 1956, the capitalists are not prepared to offer an intellectual defense of capitalism or of classical liberalism. They believe in something else: the managers' dream of command and control. — Kevin D. Williamson

Love is the conversation between possible, searing disappointment and a profoundly imagined sense of arrival and fulfillment; how we shape that conversation is the touchstone of our ability to love in the real inhabited world. — David Whyte

Whenever anyone harbored ill will toward the beast or said he'd got what he deserved, the spell increased and the evil grew stronger and stronger in the gargoyle. It became more and more difficult for people to forgive-and love-not only the beast, but each other as well. This, too, made the evil increase. — S.L. 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

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live. — David Whyte

But the process should not be confused with science. When tests are used as selections devices, they're not a neutral tool; they become a large factor int he very equation they purport to measure. For one thing, the tests tend to screen out - or repel - those who would upset the correlation. If a man can't get into the company in the first place because he isn't the company type, he can't very well get to be an executive and be tested in a study to find out what kind if profile subsequent executives should match. Long before personality tests were invented, of course, plenty of companies proved that if you only hire people of a certain type, then all your successful men will be people of that type. But no one confused this with the immutable laws of science. — William H. Whyte

We speak continually of saving time, but time in its richness is most often lost to us when we are busy without relief. — David Whyte

If a parent does not know how to love and nurture a child while he is young, especially black boys, that child will grow up out of balance mentally, therefore feeling inferior. — Daniel Whyte III

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. — David Whyte

Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. — David Whyte

Vulnerability is not a weakness but a faculty for understanding. — David Whyte

Poetry is language against which you have no defenses. — David Whyte

Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. — David Whyte

Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. — David Whyte

The process of truly learning is laborious, monotonous, and at times down right bitter and boring. Therefore, obtaining a truly higher education will require of you a determined mind and a will to stick and stay. In short, it will take discipline. But in the end, it will be worth it all. — Daniel Whyte III