Robert Creeley Quotes

Knowing reality is knowing that you can't lose it.

We have the notion that we exist but we have no way to prove it. 'I am' is the closest foundation we can get.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.

Reality is what you can count on.

What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge of infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it. Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge ... but, in the event, this very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing.

I believe that nothing that is real can pass away.

Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time." "Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.

I have been saying and writing for so many years that one sentence can encapsulate the totality of life, of existence, of being: Infinite love is the only truth-everything else is Illusion.

Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.

Love is all there is. That I know to be absolutely true.

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself.

The world in which we live is the only world about which our senses can testify.

To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be.

The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.

The thing about the truth is that it exists outside of belief. Even if nobody believes it, that thing is still true.

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.