30+ Richard Wilbur Quotes (Innovative, Poignant And Witty)

Richard Wilbur is an American poet who was born in New York City in 1921. He was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry and served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1987 to 1988. He is known for his witty and elegant style of writing, often making use of traditional forms such as the sonnet.

Top 10 Richard Wilbur Quotes

1. Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels.
2. What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.
3. There is a poignancy in all things clear, In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning. Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.
4. Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you.
5. What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?
6. Happy in all that ragged, loose collapse of water, the fountain, its effortless descent and flatteries of spray.
7. Whatever pains disease may bring Are but the tangy seasoning To Loves delicious fare.
8. Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.
9. A thrush, because I'd been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.
10. Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.

Richard Wilbur Short Quotes

• The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.
• Most women know that sex isgood for headaches.
• What's lightly hid is deepest understood.
• All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know
• Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.
• The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art.
• Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole/ And casting out myself, become a soul.
• Odd that a thing is most itself when likened

Richard Wilbur Famous Quotes And Sayings

What you hope for Is that at some point of the pointless journey, Indoors or out, and when you least expect it, Right in the middle of your stride, like that, So neatly that you never feel a thing, The kind assassin Sleep will draw a bead And blow your brains out. — Richard Wilbur

I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry. — Richard Wilbur

We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude, To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light — Richard Wilbur

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder. — Richard Wilbur

To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. — Richard Wilbur

It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self. — Richard Wilbur

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven't of late, can do no harm. — Richard Wilbur

Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody. — Richard Wilbur

That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other. — Richard Wilbur

Caught Summer is always an imagined time. Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind. There must be prime In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find Riding the palest days Its perfect blaze. — Richard Wilbur

It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence — Richard Wilbur

Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack. — Richard Wilbur

Life Lessons by Richard Wilbur

1. Richard Wilbur's work emphasizes the importance of taking time to appreciate the beauty of the natural world and the people around us.
2. His poetry also stresses the importance of finding joy and peace in the small moments of life, even when faced with difficult situations.
3. Finally, his work encourages us to think deeply about the power of language and how it can be used to create beauty and express complex emotions.