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There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.
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
Machine
Machines
Large
Small
Words
Nothing
Made
Sentimental
More quotes by William Carlos Williams
Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Your knees are a southern breeze.
William Carlos Williams
[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living.
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
The poem springs from the half spoken words of the patient.... When asked, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
William Carlos Williams
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
The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.
William Carlos Williams
The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.
William Carlos Williams
No ideas but in things.
William Carlos Williams
There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.
William Carlos Williams
Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say - a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale.
William Carlos Williams
Without invention nothing is well-spaced.
William Carlos Williams
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. - through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.
William Carlos Williams
Most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them
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
Minds like beds always made up (more stony than a shore) unwilling or unable.
William Carlos Williams
Being an art form, verse cannot be free in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.
William Carlos Williams
The only realism in art is of the imagination.
William Carlos Williams
Shoes twisted into incredible lilies.
William Carlos Williams
You lethargic, waiting upon me, waiting for the fire and I attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty Shaken by your beauty Shaken.
William Carlos Williams
So different, this man And this woman: A stream flowing In a field.
William Carlos Williams
