All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.

— William Carlos Williams

A man is indeed a city, and for the poet there are no ideas but in things.

— William Carlos Williams

Beauty’ is related not to ‘loveliness’ but to a state in which reality plays a part.

— William Carlos Williams

But the sea which no one tends is also a garden

— William Carlos Williams

But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.

— William Carlos Williams

Dance Russo If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping, and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

— William Carlos Williams

For the beginning is assuredly the end-since we know nothing, pureeing simple, beyond our own complexities.

— William Carlos Williams

Hold back the edges of your gown, Ladies, we are going through hell.

— William Carlos Williams

If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

— William Carlos Williams

Imagination thought it cannot wipe out the sting of remorse can instruct the mind in its proper uses.

— William Carlos Williams