David Whyte Quotes

One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

Find out who you are and be that person. That's what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come.

I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.

I do not look to Hollywood to give me character clues.

We all have to go through our own experiences of growing up.

I went through so many phases when I was young - surfer girl, tom boy, punk - but they weren't mistakes, just moments.

Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.

We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what's left is who we truly are.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.

Before you can do something, you must first be something.

the process of building a self and its works is always too slow. One is always in arrears to oneself.

The authentic self is the best part of a human being. It's the part of you that already cares, that is already passionate about evolution. When your authentic self miraculously awakens and becomes stronger than your ego, then you will truly begin to make a difference in this world. You will literally enter into a partnership with the creative principle.

An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

The real essence of art turned out to be not something high up and far off - it was right inside my ordinary daily self - If a musician wants to become a finer artist, he must first become a finer person.

The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself. Self-transformation and the transformation of others have constituted the radical interest of our century, whether in painting, psychiatry, or political action.

The real religion is not imitation of anybody else, it is a search to find out your own authentic self, who you are.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you?

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

The finding of God is the coming to one's own self.