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Security of character would be like a compass, you know? Other people may say that this way is north, or this way might be north. But the compass just says -- north. That's what we count on.
William Stafford
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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Security
Character
May
Might
Compass
Way
North
Would
Count
Like
Compassion
People
Says
More quotes by William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
William Stafford
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford
Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
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Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
William Stafford
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford