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
Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The absence of challenge or intensity in life can lead to a feeling of emptiness and disconnection.
David Whyte's quote speaks to the idea that without the challenges or 'edges' in our lives, we may fall into a state of numbness where we feel disconnected from our emotions and experiences. It suggests that it is the difficulties and intense moments that give life its meaning and vibrancy, rather than leading to despair, they can lead to deeper awareness and appreciation.
Themes
ChallengeNumbnessLifeEmotionsAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
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
Spare me through your mercy, do not punish me through your justice.
Anselm Of CanterburyRead
White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.
Jack LondonRead
In a sensibly organised society, if you improve productivity, there is room for everybody to benefit.
Geoffrey HintonRead
My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.
Terry Tempest WilliamsRead
I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not a live. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it.
Charlotte DelboRead
Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression.
Marshall McluhanRead