David Whyte Quotes

As you recognize that you already own the wholeness you seek, and no one outside you can give you more than you already are, dysfunctional situations will evaporate like bad dreams exposed to the morning sun.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence—which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence.

Just a little relaxation, just a little looking inwards, and the doors of immense potentialities open up. You are no more a beggar. Without conquering the world you have conquered the whole universe. Just conquer yourself.

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.

We need to see, and agree that what we seek already lives within us, and we within it. Now we know our one great task: watch for whatever promises us freedom, and then quietly, consciously refuse to see ourselves through the eyes of what we know is incomplete. Then we live wholeness itself, instead of spending our lives looking for it.

I want people to find their inner depth.

Gail Sheehy tells us that "the delights of self-discovery are always available." All Fools' Day is the perfect day to engrave this wisdom in our hearts.

I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ, and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.

If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Everything I desire is within me.

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.

Just keep coming home to yourself, you are the one who you've been waiting for.

I am then never less alone than when alone

He looked down at her. "Have you found that peace?" Yes, she had. But it was so corny and cliched that she couldn't bring herself to admit it. "A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world.

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Within ourselves is not very far and yet it is so far that one's whole life is not always long enough to get there.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

This is my spiritual journey through life, my way of making sense of the world. I don't need permission from anyone or accolades from anyone; it is completely internal.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.