Quote

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

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The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
William Stafford
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The earth says have a place, be what that place requires hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
William Stafford
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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
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
William Stafford
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
William Stafford
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It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.
William Stafford
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
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When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
William Stafford
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
William Stafford
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
William Stafford
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
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If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
William Stafford
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford