William Carlos Williams - Today Quotes

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Not now. Love itself a flower
with roots in a parched ground.
Empty pockets make empty heads.
Cure it if you can but
do not believe that we can live
today in the country
for the country will bring us
no peace.

William Carlos Williams
The War is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.

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
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
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
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