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
To seek out beauty in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that finding beauty in our work transforms our efforts into a meaningful journey rather than just a completion of tasks.
David Whyte emphasizes that the true value of our work extends beyond the final outcome; it encompasses the growth and development we experience as individuals during the process. When we seek beauty in our tasks, we engage in a deeper, more reflective journey of self-discovery that enriches both our labor and our lives.
Themes
BeautyWorkJourneyGrowthLabor
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a team meeting to inspire colleagues about the deeper value of their contributions.
More from David Whyte
All quotes →Poetry 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
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If anyone gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I'm never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do-only that I want that picture.
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I think there is a big difference between the music business and music. And my relationship is to music, not music business. I think the business will keep changing, but music won't. Music will be there.
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Poems are rough notations for the music we are.
RumiRead
They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially, even apart from the necessities of life, since the mind would wing to the other pole and spread itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.
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I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.
Mikhail BaryshnikovRead
We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.
Eddie Van HalenRead