108 Quotes by W. S. Merwin

I’m very pessimistic about the future of the human species. We have been so indifferent to life on the whole that it will take its toll. It’s not just the polar bears that are having a hard time; what we’re doing is gradually impoverishing and poisoning the whole of the rest of life.

I also think that life itself is both indifferent to us and the source of all of our joys and everything that we love. And it’s necessary to accept the one in order to love the other.

So this is what I am Pondering his eyes that could not Conceive that I was a creature to run from I who have always believed too much in words.

I wouldn’t be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental – I don’t want any of those tags.

That's a great gift to be given, that feeling of no fear.

I think this is one of the benefits of getting older: that one has that perspective on things farther away. One is so caught up in middle years in the idea of accomplishing something when, in fact, the full accomplishment is always with one.

In a sense, much that is learned is bound to be bad habits. You're always beginning again.

As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.

As soon as I could write with a little pencil, I was writing these little hymns and illustrating them, and I thought they should be sung in church, but they never were.