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If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

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
Poem
Pleasure

More quotes by William Carlos Williams

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In summer, the song sings itself.
William Carlos Williams
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A poem is a small machine made of words. . .Its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.
William Carlos Williams
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Empty pockets make empty heads.
William Carlos Williams
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For there is a wind or a ghost of wind in all books echoing the life there, a high wind that fills the tubes of the ear until we think we hear a wind, actual.
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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I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.
William Carlos Williams
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A new world is only a new mind.
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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Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse-- at least, blinded by the light, young love is.
William Carlos Williams
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so much depends upon a red wheel barrow
William Carlos Williams
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But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.
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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and there grows in the mind a scent, it may be, of locust blossoms whose perfume is itself a wind moving to lead the mind away.
William Carlos Williams
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Love is unworldly and nothing comes of it but love.
William Carlos Williams
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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
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The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky.
William Carlos Williams
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Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.
William Carlos Williams
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Love is a young green willow shimmering at the bare wood's edge
William Carlos Williams
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For the beginning is assuredly the end- since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities.
William Carlos Williams
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I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!
William Carlos Williams