65 Quotes by Edward Dahlberg

We are uneasy with an affectionate man, for we are positive he wants something of us, particularly our love.

Man is at the nadir of his stregth when the Earth, the seas, the mountains are not in him, for without them his soul is unsourced, and he has no images by which to abide.

I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks.

Who has enough credit in this world to pay for his mistakes?

Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.

Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is word-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.

The earnings of a poet could be reckoned by a metaphysician rather than a bookkeeper.

To write is a humiliation.

No people require maxims so much as the American. The reason is obvious: the country is so vast, the people always going somewhere, from Oregon apple valley to boreal New England, that we do not know whether to be temperate orchards or sterile climate.