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The only realism in art is of the imagination.

William Carlos Williams

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William Carlos Williams
Age: 79 †
Born: 1883
Born: September 17
Died: 1963
Died: March 4
Autobiographer
Literary Critic
Physician
Physician Writer
Poet
Writer
Art
Realism
Imagination

More quotes by William Carlos Williams

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Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
William Carlos Williams
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When I am alone I am happy.
William Carlos Williams
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A profusion of pink roses being ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring.
William Carlos Williams
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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
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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
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All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.
William Carlos Williams
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One by one the 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
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The business of love is cruelty which, by our wills, we transform to live together.
William Carlos Williams
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The instant trivial as it is is all we have unless-unless things the imagination feeds upon, the scent of the rose, startle us anew.
William Carlos Williams
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Unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness
William Carlos Williams
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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
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A new music is a new mind.
William Carlos Williams
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But the sea which no one tends is also a garden
William Carlos Williams
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O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine. The twigs conspire against you! Hear hem! They hold you from behind.
William Carlos Williams
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Say it, no ideas but in things - nothing but the blank faces of the houses and cylindrical trees bent, forked by preconception and accident - split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained - secret - into the body of the light!
William Carlos Williams
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For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love, what we have lost in the anticipation a descent follows, endless and indestructible.
William Carlos Williams
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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.
William Carlos Williams
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First we have to see. Or first we have to be taught to see. We have to be taught to see here, because here is everywhere, related to everywhere else, and if we don't see, hear, taste, smell and feel in this place - not only will we never know anything but the world of sense will be by that much diminished everywhere.
William Carlos Williams
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We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.
William Carlos Williams
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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