Robert Bly Quotes

It's something that I had been pushing down my whole life. The search for meaning, I guess, the whispering of the soul.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

If you desire to know where your spiritual work lies, look to your emotional pain.

A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasn't got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.

Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.

Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.

I used to think that divorce meant failure, but now I see it more as a step along the path of self-realization and growth.

What makes a person is the ability to look at themselves and deal with their own lives.

I have a lot of growing up to do, or a lot of growing down. I think that's probably more appropriate.

I'm not a fighter, but in my mind I'm fighting every day. 'What's new? What am I doing?' I'm fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren't samurai, but my soul is.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

I'm on the path to being someone I'm equally terrified by and obsessed with. My true self.

I've been involved in social activism my entire life, and I would argue that many people involved in social activist movements have done very little work on themselves.

I'm always soul searching on a spiritual level.

It's ironic, but until you can free those final monsters within the jungle of yourself, your life, your soul is up for grabs.