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 BlyRead
Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True beauty and wonder exist within ourselves, not just in the external world.
This quote by Robert Bly emphasizes the idea that we often overlook the richness of our own inner experience when seeking beauty and joy in the external world. Instead of searching for fulfillment outside, he suggests that we explore the depths of our own being, where we can find a multitude of layers, much like flowers with many petals, revealing profound beauty both internally and as we interact with the world around us.
Themes
BeautySelf-DiscoveryInner PeacePhilosophyNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a mindfulness workshop to encourage participants to look within themselves for happiness.
More from Robert Bly
All quotes βAs I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.
Robert BlyRead
I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.
Robert BlyRead
My feeling is that poetry is also a healing process, and then when a person tries to write poetry with depth or beauty, he will find himself guided along paths which will heal him, and this is more important, actually, than any of the poetry he writes.
Robert BlyRead
Every part of you that you do not love will regress and become hostile towards you.
Robert BlyRead
The door to the soul is unlocked; you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.
Robert BlyRead
Similar quotes
That the object of the Brahmins in giving up beef-eating was to snatch away from the Buddhist Bhikshus the supremacy they had acquired is evidenced by the adoption of vegetarianism by Brahmins.
B. R. AmbedkarRead
When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.
Tom RobbinsRead
Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
E. O. WilsonRead
I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to cede any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father.
Sitting BullRead
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
Bill WattersonRead