Top 100 Whyte's Quotes
#1. Whyte's work remains a living and usable handbook for improving our cities, our countryside, and our lives.
Nathan Glazer
#2. 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
#3. I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.
David Whyte
#4. Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.
Alexander Whyte
#5. In Germany, they have great difficulty with anything that smacks of cultism or messianic leadership. You can't talk about leadership in its charismatic forms.
David Whyte
#6. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.
David Whyte
#7. What is time? How is it measured? Why do we measure it? What is its purpose?
-Mr. Ludwig
S.L. Whyte
#8. I knew even then, the first time that I saw you, that I loved you.
Jack Whyte
#9. 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
#10. There is no house like the house of belonging.
David Whyte
#11. 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
#12. Stop trying to change reality by eliminating complexity.
David Whyte
#13. 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
#14. The spectacle of people following current custom for lack of will or imagination to do anything else is hardly a new failing.
William H. Whyte
#15. All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.
David Whyte
#16. 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
#17. In the poetic tradition, the heart's affections are indeed holy, and if organizations are asking for people's hearts and minds, they are asking in a way for their holy and hidden affections at the same time.
David Whyte
#18. 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
#19. Yes,it is remarkable how far a person can travel by sea.
S.L. Whyte
#20. One should not only be smart in his head, but one should also be smart in how he relates to other people.
Daniel Whyte III
#21. No man's prayer is acceptable with God whose life is not well pleasing before God.
Alexander Whyte
#22. 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
#23. The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center.
William H. Whyte
#24. The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.
David Whyte
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.
David Whyte
#28. It is the holiness of our Lord's heart that fills the New Testament full and makes it the unparalleled and unapproachable Book that it is.
Alexander Whyte
#29. You do not really care for God's mercy or His comfort either, so long as you live in any sin. And it is well that you do not; for you can have neither. Your peace will be like a river, when you put away your sin; but not one word of true peace, not one drop of true comfort, can you have till then.
Alexander Whyte
#30. A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future.
David Whyte
#31. 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
#32. The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest.
It's wholeheartedness.
David Whyte
#33. 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
#34. 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.
David Whyte
#35. 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
#36. A wish becomes a greatest desire at the very moment when a person's belief in the seemingly impossible is stronger than any doubt.
-Kevin McNamara
S.L. Whyte
#37. Shyness means you are in the hallway of a greater presence. You just don't know how to take the conversation another step. It's a lovely indication.
David Whyte
#38. 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.
David Whyte
#39. It's not right to put water before people and then keep them away from it.
William H. Whyte
#40. Whatever their occupation, almost all organization people feel their particular job is depression-proof.
William H. Whyte
#41. 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
#42. If in your mind it was possible to take a year's sabbatical from work to reassess your life, what would you do and where would you go?
David Whyte
#43. There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
David Whyte
#44. Sincere regret may be a faculty for paying attention to the future, for sensing a new tide where we missed a previous one, for experiencing timelessness with a grandchild where we neglected a boy of our own.
David Whyte
#45. The greatest luxury of having money should be not having to worry about it.
David Whyte
#46. 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
#47. What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.
William H. Whyte
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. Honesty is reached through the doorway of grief and loss.
David Whyte
#51. Let the apple ripen
on the branch
beyond your need
to take it down.
David Whyte
#52. [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
#53. Enough.
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
Until now.
David Whyte
#54. Prayer is the only way to amend your life: and without prayer, it will never be mended.
Alexander Whyte
#56. 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
#57. I am ashamed to say this, but as a child, neither my parents not my teachers pushed me to read. In fact, I did not read an entire book through until I was a grown man and had learned the awesome power of reading on my own.
Daniel Whyte III
#58. What if the world is holding its breath -
waiting for you to take the place that only you can fill?
David Whyte
#59. Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance.
David Whyte
#60. 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
#61. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
David Whyte
#62. The greatest tragedy is to live out someone else's life thinking it was your own.
David Whyte
#63. 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
#64. She knew exactly how he was feeling, because experience had taught her that the kind of excitement she was feeling at that moment was never, ever one-sided. On the contrary, she knew that it was born of acute and mutual anticipation, and she knew, too, that it would not be denied.
Jack Whyte
#65. James 4:14New King James Version (NKJV)
14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Garfield Whyte
#66. Poetry is language against which you have no defenses.
David Whyte
#67. The same man who will quote from Benjamin Franklin on thrift for the house organ would be horrified if consumers took these maxims to heart and started putting more money into savings and less into installment purchases.
William H. Whyte
#68. 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
#69. The onlooker had better wipe the sympathy off his face. What he has seen is a revolution, not the home of little cogs and drones. What he has seen is the dormitory of the next managerial class.
William H. Whyte
#70. There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation.
David Whyte
#71. To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
David Whyte
#72. The moment you've uttered the exact dimensionality of your exile, you're already turning towards home.
David Whyte
#73. To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter's face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him.
David Whyte
#74. But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside
David Whyte
#75. 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
#77. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.
David Whyte
#78. 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
#79. Art is the act of triggering deep memories of what it means to be fully human.
David Whyte
#80. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing.
David Whyte
#81. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance...
David Whyte
#82. When I recite poems onstage, I put myself into the very personal struggle and it grants tremendous perspective. At the same time you get another perspective on the poem you're reciting.
David Whyte
#83. I ask the reader to remember that what is most obvious may be most worthy of analysis. Fertile vistas may open out when commonplace facts are examined from a fresh point of view.
Lancelot Law Whyte
#85. 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
#86. Some may think that little creature is useless," Eliam said. "But even the very smallest of all creations is essential to our existence. Every single one adds to the whole.
S.L. Whyte
#87. It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.
William H. Whyte
#88. We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again
David Whyte
#89. Another one? They seem to be multiplying like flies, these philosophers.
Mervyn S. Whyte
#90. Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
David Whyte
#91. Trees are contagious; as soon as one neighborhood or street is planted, citizen pressure builds up for action from the next street.
William H. Whyte
#92. Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.
David Whyte
#93. Therefore, at any time of life, follow your own questions; don't mistake other people's questions for your own.
David Whyte
#94. You'll always love the person, if you're sensible. But you get a lot of people, especially in divorces and separations, doing a lot of damage to themselves, because they can't figure out that they actually still love this person, but not in their original way.
David Whyte
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. To give generously but appropriately and then, most difficult of all, and as the full apotheosis of the art, with feeling, in the moment and spontaneously, has always been recognized as one of the greatest of human qualities.
David Whyte
#98. People do not always argue because they misunderstand one another, they argue because they hold different goals.
William H. Whyte
#99. 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
#100. The quality of taking responsibility does not come naturally. It has to be taught
more by example than by anything else.
Daniel Whyte III
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