Richard Wilbur Quotes

If I'm going to talk about an issue, I better know what it's about viscerally.

I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

Seeing through is rarely seeing into.

A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.

I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.

I see too deep and too much.

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

We are wiser than we know.

from one thing, know ten thousand things

As one can see when the eyes are open, so one can understand when the heart is open.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

Insight is not a matter of memory, of knowledge and time, which are all thought.

We understand more than we know.

You either get it or you don't. Become one of those who get it.

Understanding is the sure and clear knowledge of some invisible thing.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

One who ”knows,” knows there is no need to discourse; knowing is enough

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.

All can hear, but only the sensitive can understand.