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 WhyteRead
There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the silent struggle many experience and the lack of awareness or language to articulate their despair.
David Whyte's quote reflects the profound insight that many individuals quietly endure a life filled with unexpressed desperation. It suggests that while the experience of discontent and longing is widespread, there is often a barrier in articulating those feelings, leading to a continuation of suffering without a path to change or understanding. The emphasis is on the importance of language and self-awareness in breaking free from such existential struggles.
Themes
DesperationLanguageStruggleLifeAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote might be used in a speech about mental health awareness.
More from David Whyte
All quotes βPoetry 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 WhyteRead
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 WhyteRead
The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears
David WhyteRead
The severest test of work today, is not of our strategies, but of our imaginations and identities.
David WhyteRead
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 WhyteRead
Similar quotes
Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
C. S. LewisRead
Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
George OrwellRead
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
Kurt VonnegutRead
The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward. The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be just to keep moving.
Pema ChodronRead
It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever.
J. K. RowlingRead
'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.
Bruce LeeRead