Hilda Doolittle Quotes

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

If you would judge, understand.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

To understand is to decipher. To hear significance is to translate.

Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.

The meaning lies in the appropriation.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.

Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. I'd say what any decent poet would say if anyone dared ask him to analyze his work: if you see it, darling, then it's there!

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.

Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Cleverness is not wisdom.

Meaning comes from the capacity to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

I don't take a scene or word for granted.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in.

The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.