Robert Bly Men Quotations

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.

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

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.

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.

... where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be.

Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings.

We are living at an important and fruitful moment now, for it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by the popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them. By the time a man is thirty-five 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.

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

Every modern male has, lying at the bottom of his psyche, a large, primitive being covered with hair down to his feet. Making contact with this Wild Man is the step the Eighties male or the Nineties male has yet to take. That bucketing-out process has yet to begin in our contemporary culture.

If a man, cautious, hides his limp, Somebody has to limp it! Things do it; the surroundings limp. House walls get scars, the car breaks down; matter, in drudgery, takes it up.

One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.

And why shouldn't the miraculous, / Caught on this earth, visit / The old man alone in his hut?

A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this.

Every breath taken in by the man Who loves, and the woman who loves, Goes to fill the water tank Where the spirit horses drink.

One man wrote me, saying, 'You know who you are? You're nothing but a Captain Bly pissing up a drainpipe!'

In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building and emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.

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