95 Quotes by Robert Bly

"They wrote to me and said something about it, and I said that if it doesn't involve any work, I'll do it. (On being named Minnesota's first Poet Laureate)"

"It's hard to grasp how much generosityIs involved in letting us go on breathing,When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only forOur persistence in keeping our small boat afloatWhen so many have gone down in the storm."

"With Pale Women in MarylandWith pale women in Maryland,Passing the proud and tragic pastures,And stupefied with loveAnd the stupendous burdens of the foreign trees,As all before us lived, dazedWith overabundant love in the reach of the Chesapeake,Past the tobacco warehouse, through our dark livesLike those before, we move to the death we loveWith pale women in Maryland."

"The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness."

"When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching."

"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."

"It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions."

"That's what I liked best about him. He put his body where his mouth was,"

"I know a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty than they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone"

"Some men live with an invisible limp, stagger, or drag a leg. Their sons are often angry."