David Whyte

Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. ”

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. ”

Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance. ”

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. ”

The ultimate lesson is that there is no immunity, no matter our age or the size of our retirement account, from going through constant cycles of integration and disintegration in which we are humbled and hopefully set to rights with the world again. ”

The greatest luxury of having money should be not having to worry about it. ”

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. ”

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. ”

It is not the thing you fear that you must deal with: it is the mother of the thing you fear. ”

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. ”