William Carlos Williams

"Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, forget all inhibitions."

"To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment."

"The value of the poem is its completeness in itself."

"We cannot listen to the past, it is silent."

"The writer of imagination would find all his adventure in himself."

"The taste of success comes from the understanding of failure."

"A man is not a machine."

"The profound pleasure is in the personal intensity of the work."

"When the loose algae washes up on the beach, I think of you."

"War is not an excuse to bury the truth."

"Patience is the companion of justice."

"The good life is lived when the individual maintains his spirit."

"Only the imagination is real."

"I lie here thinking of music, of all the detail in music."

"Death is a fact more real than life."

"The university is a place of isolation."

"A word is not the thing it represents."

"Finance is the backbone of the world."

"The spirit of enterprise and invention must not die."

"No ideas but in things—that is the whole scheme."

"The reward of the true poet is not in laurels but in the act itself."

"A man of letters today must know machinery."

"Hope is the thing with feathers that sits upon the soul."

"The power of the mind is immeasurable."

"To compose I must make sure of each word."

"Peace is something that comes from within."

"The duty of the young is to test the old and find what endures."

"Love is not something external but an internal understanding."

"The farmer and the poet must work together."

"Fear is the enemy of the heart."