Robert Bly Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• In the sibling society, both the adult and the elder get lost, and no one knows where they are.

  Robert Bly

  Sibling, Adults, Lost

  Source: www.utne.com

  7 Copy quote

• It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.

  Robert Bly

  Tea

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine.'

  Robert Bly

  Wine, Divine Feminine, Attention

  Source: www.utne.com

  6 Copy quote

• An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead.

  Robert Bly

  World, Elders

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

• The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.

  Robert Bly

  Children, World, Made

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

• If a man, cautious,
  hides his limp,
  Somebody has to limp it! Things
  do it; the surroundings limp.
  House walls get scars,
  the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

  Robert Bly

  Wall, Men, Car

  Robert Bly (1981). “The man in the black coat turns: poems”

  9 Copy quote

• I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

  Robert Bly

  Daughter, Son, Hands

  "I have daughters and I have sons". Poem by Robert Bly, www.newyorker.com. April 19, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

• A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this.

  Robert Bly

  Men, Needs, Fart

  Robert Bly (2004). “Iron John: A Book about Men”, p.137, Da Capo Press

  4 Copy quote

• The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing

  Robert Bly

  Journey, Other Worlds, Wings

  Robert Bly (1986). “Selected poems”, Harper Perennial

  23 Copy quote

• I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

  Robert Bly

  Moving, Moon, Light

  12 Copy quote

• I saw Sophia Loren - the Italian woman with those wonderful cheekbones - in a movie the other day. She must have had 24 face-lifts, and she looks like an alien, as if she weren't from this world at all. Her Italian wrinkles would have been a thousand times more beautiful.

  Robert Bly

  Beautiful, Italian, Wrinkles

  Source: www.utne.com

  15 Copy quote

• You have an utterly sincere glance when you look around after you are shipwrecked. You weep a long time on an island when you realize what's happened to you.

  Robert Bly

  Islands, Long, Looks

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

• Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars.

  Robert Bly

  Stars, Distance, Likes

  Source: www.utne.com

  9 Copy quote

• I think more and more people are recognizing how much adults and elders are actually needed. That's a gift of the sibling society.

  Robert Bly

  Sibling, Thinking, People

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

  Robert Bly

  Obsession, Calamity, Humans

  7 Copy quote

• Poetry keeps longing alive.

  Robert Bly

  Alive, Longing

  Source: www.utne.com

  5 Copy quote

• When anyone seriously pursues an art - painting, poetry, sculpture, composing - over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.

  Robert Bly

  Art, Grief, Years

  7 Copy quote

• In the society that has replaced the paternalistic society, women are able to develop their independent and social energies much more. That is good.

  Robert Bly

  Independent, Energy, Able

  Source: www.utne.com

  8 Copy quote

• All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.

  Robert Bly

  Girl, Boys, Night

  Source: www.utne.com

  7 Copy quote

• Adulthood has something to do with not choosing any of the pure points of view, but living about half of what you really want to live.

  Robert Bly

  Views, Half, Want

  Source: www.utne.com

  7 Copy quote

• The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.

  Robert Bly

  Song, World, Made

  Source: www.utne.com

  5 Copy quote

• A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.

  Robert Bly

  Moving, Lazy, Tumbleweeds

  Robert Bly (2013). “Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013: Selected Poems, 1950–2011”, p.220, W. W. Norton & Company

  12 Copy quote

• Wherever there is water there is someone drowning.

  Robert Bly

  Water, Drowning

  Robert Bly (2013). “Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013: Selected Poems, 1950–2011”, p.258, W. W. Norton & Company

  9 Copy quote

• All of those on the left, as I am, have always vastly preferred the democratic society over the hierarchical society and still do, but the democratic culture doesn't exist without highly informed citizens capable of thinking well, and if you have schools in which 40 percent of the people coming out of them cannot make change for a dollar, you don't have a democracy. You have a sibling society.

  Robert Bly

  Sibling, School, Thinking

  Source: www.utne.com

  5 Copy quote

• Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing.

  Robert Bly

  Catholic, Church, Hierarchy

  Source: www.utne.com

  4 Copy quote

Page 3 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin