William Carlos Williams Quotes

124 Sourced Quotes

In summer the song sings itself
above the muffled words—

William Carlos Williams
It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams
What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the haunted news I get from some obscure patient's eyes is not trivial. It is profound.

William Carlos Williams
Why do I write today? The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it: colored women
day workers—
old and experienced—
returning home at dusk,
in cast off clothing
faces like
old Florentine oak.

William Carlos Williams
Lift your flowers
on bitter stems
chickory!
Lift them up
out of the scorched ground!
Bear no foliage
but give yourself
wholly to that!
Strain under them
you bitter stems
that no beast eats —
and scorn greyness!

William Carlos Williams
Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if it was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I don't take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if that's the game.

William Carlos Williams
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches —
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
The cold, familiar wind — Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined —
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of
entrance — Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.

William Carlos Williams
The cries of a dying dog
are to be blotted out
as best I can.
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.

William Carlos Williams
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot.

William Carlos Williams
These are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you:— the stain of love
is upon the world!

William Carlos Williams
What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?

William Carlos Williams
Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams.

William Carlos Williams
From the petal's edge a line starts that being of steel infinitely fine, infinitely rigid penetrates the Milky Way without contact—

William Carlos Williams
Remorse is a virtue in that it is a stirrer up of the emotions but it is a folly to accept it is a criticism of conduct.

William Carlos Williams
As the rain falls
so does
your love
bathe every
open
object of the world

William Carlos Williams
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

William Carlos Williams
Imagination though it cannot wipe out the sting of remorse can instruct the mind in its proper uses.

William Carlos Williams
O Marvelous! What new configuration will come next? I am bewildered with multiplicity.

William Carlos Williams
I think these days when there is so little to believe in——when the old loyalties——God, country, and the hope of Heaven——aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in——someone who seems beautiful.

William Carlos Williams
It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part.
I keep writing largely because I get a satisfaction from it which can't be duplicated elsewhere. It fills the moments which otherwise are either terrifying or depressed. Not that I live that way, work too quiets me. My chief dissatisfaction with myself at the moment is that I don't seem to be able to lose myself in what I have to do as I should like to.

William Carlos Williams
The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.

William Carlos Williams
My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.

William Carlos Williams
Your thighs are appletrees. Your knees are a southern breeze.

William Carlos Williams
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

William Carlos Williams
There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.

William Carlos Williams
Among
of
green stiff
old
bright broken
branch
come white
sweet
May again

William Carlos Williams
No wreaths please — especially no hothouse flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes — a few books perhaps.

William Carlos Williams
One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.

William Carlos Williams
THE THOUGHTFUL LOVER Deny yourself all half things. Have it or leave it. But it will keep—or it is not worth the having. Never start anything you can't finish— However do not lose faith because you are starved! She loves you she says. Believe it —tomorrow. But today the particulars of poetry that difficult art require your whole attention.

William Carlos Williams