Robert Bly quotes

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching. (Robert Bly)
By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life. View quote
Robert Bly
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. View quote
Robert Bly
The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness. View quote
Robert Bly
There are years from my childhood that I cannot remember and I cannot forget. View quote
Robert Bly
If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth: Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside. View quote
Robert Bly
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. View quote
Robert Bly
Wherever there is water there is someone drowning. View quote
Robert Bly
The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed. View quote
Robert Bly
We make the path by walking. View quote
Robert Bly
The deeper question... is not whether ancient religious forms can reform... but whether new forms of nature-related spirituality might emerge. (Robert Bly)
I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness. View quote
Robert Bly
There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone. View quote
Robert Bly
Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us. View quote
Robert Bly
The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large. View quote
Robert Bly
Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry. View quote
Robert Bly
The language you use for your poems should be the language you use with your friends. View quote
Robert Bly
There are very few adults in our culture able to imagine any genuine life coming from the vertical plane - tradition, religion, or devotion. View quote
Robert Bly
An elder is someone who understands that the world belongs to the dead. View quote
Robert Bly
The best presenters have conversations with their audiences. View quote
Robert Bly
Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars. (Robert Bly)
Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing. View quote
Robert Bly
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. View quote
Robert Bly
The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult? View quote
Robert Bly
I have spent many years trying to recover a common language, one that can cross the distance between people. View quote
Robert Bly