Quote

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

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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
Thing
Away
Relief
World
Art
Turning
Part
Arts
Today
Generally
Firsts
Field
First
Merely
Different
Fields
Diversion
Writing
War
Sector

More quotes by William Carlos Williams

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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
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There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.
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There is no comment on pictures but pictures, on music but music, on poems but poetry. If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't. And that's all there is to that.
William Carlos Williams
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A new world is only a new mind.
William Carlos Williams
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And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind.
William Carlos Williams
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The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
William Carlos Williams
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We sit and talk quietly, with long lapses of silence, and I am aware of the stream that has no language, coursing beneath the quiet heaven of your eyes, which has no speech.
William Carlos Williams
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In summer, the song sings itself.
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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What love is I don't know if it's not the response of our deepest natures to one another.
William Carlos Williams
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What can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.
William Carlos Williams
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No ideas but in things.
William Carlos Williams
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I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.
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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It is not fair to be old, to put on a brown sweater.
William Carlos Williams
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I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.
William Carlos Williams
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Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze.
William Carlos Williams
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Being an art form, verse cannot be free in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.
William Carlos Williams
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Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man, is not defeated.
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