William Carlos Williams - Man Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

View all William Carlos Williams Quotes
So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

William Carlos Williams
When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them — without distortion which would mar their exact significances — into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. 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.

William Carlos Williams
Who isn't frustrated and does not prove it by his actions — if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.

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. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not?
The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn't a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.

William Carlos Williams
He's come out of the man
and he's let
the man go —

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
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
Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated – thrown aside – a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions.

William Carlos Williams
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realise his wishes- Now that he can realise them, he must either change them or perish

William Carlos Williams