Top 48 David Whyte Quotes About Life (GROWTH)

Top 10 Most Famous David Whyte Quotes (BEST)

“To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible – that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins.”
David Whyte

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

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

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive. — Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to **learn** anything or anyone that does not bring you alive.

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

“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

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

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.

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. — When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your **vision** has gone no part of the world can find you.

Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity. — Stop trying to **change** reality by attempting to eliminate complexity.

6 David Whyte Quotes on Poetry

“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.”
David Whyte

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from. — There’s a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of **poetry** comes from.

“It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.”
David Whyte

Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat. — **Poetry** is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.

“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 language against which you have no defenses. — **Poetry** is language against which you have no defenses.

8 Inspirational David Whyte Quotes About Life

“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.”
David Whyte

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

“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

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

“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

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

“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

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

7 David Whyte Quotes on Work and Workplaces

“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

Preserving the soul means that we come out of hiding at last and bring more of ourselves into the workplace.

A sure sign of a soul-based workplace is excitement, enthusiasm, real passion; not manufactured passion, but real involvement. And there's very little fear. — A sure sign of a soul-based workplace is **excitement**, enthusiasm, real **passion**; not manufactured passion, but real involvement. And there’s very little fear.

“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.”
David 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. — 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.

A soul-based workplace asks things of me that I didn't even know I had. It's constantly telling me that I belong to something large in the world. — A soul-based workplace asks things of me that I didn’t even know I had. It’s constantly telling me that I belong to something large in the world.

There is no house like the house of belonging.

11 David Whyte Quotes that Will Make You Think

“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

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

The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking, as it does by the answering.

“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

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

Wanting soul life without the dark, warming intelligence of personal doubt is like expecting an egg without the brooding heat of the mother hen. — Wanting soul life without the dark, warming **intelligence** of personal doubt is like expecting an egg without the brooding heat of the mother hen.

“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

We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a marriage or to a cause, exactly what kind of love we are involved with. — We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a **marriage** or to a cause, exactly what kind of **love** we are involved with.

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

Regret is a short, evocative and achingly beautiful word: an elegy to lost possibilities even in its brief annunciation.

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

2 David Whyte Quotes on Honesty

“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