William Carlos Williams quotes - page 3

The earth cracks and is shriveled up; the wind moans piteously; the sky goes out if you should fail. (William Carlos Williams)
Your case has been reviewed by high-minded and unprejudiced observers (like hell they were!) the president of a great university, the president of a noteworthy technical school and a judge too old to sit on the bench, men already rewarded for their services to pedagogy and the enforcement of arbitrary statutes. In other words pimps to tradition. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It's all you deserve. You've got the cash, what the hell do you care? You've got nothing to lose. You are inheritors of a great tradition. My country right or wrong! You do what you're told to do. You don't answer back the way Tommy Jeff did or Ben Frank or Georgie Washing. I'll say you don't. You're civilized. You let your betters tell you where you get off. Go ahead. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It is not fair to be old, to put on a brown sweater. View quote
William Carlos Williams
But the sea which no one tends is also a garden. View quote
William Carlos Williams
If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem. View quote
William Carlos Williams
The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Empty pockets make empty heads. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches - They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past. (William Carlos Williams)
But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part. View quote
William Carlos Williams
He's come out of the man and he's let the man go - the liar Dead his eyes rolled up out of the light - a mockery which love cannot touch - just bury it and hide its face for shame. View quote
William Carlos Williams
But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents. View quote
William Carlos Williams
René Char you are a poet who believes in the power of beauty to right all wrongs. I believe it also. With invention and courage we shall surpass the pitiful dumb beasts, let all men believe it, as you have taught me also to believe it. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It isn't what he says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Not now. Love itself a flower with roots in a parched ground. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Hold back the edges of your gown, Ladies, we are going through hell. (William Carlos Williams)
It is at the edge of the petal that love waits. View quote
William Carlos Williams
A man isn't a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so - and most take an insane pride in believing it. View quote
William Carlos Williams
Well - all things turn bitter in the end whether you choose the right or the left way and - dreams are not a bad thing. View quote
William Carlos Williams
It is dreams that have destroyed us. There is no more pride in horses or in rein holding. View quote
William Carlos Williams