“What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.”

— Robert Frost

For Once, Then, Something (1923)
Context: Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in [[w:Narcissus (mythology)|a shining surface picture
My myself]] in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths – and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something." by Robert Frost?

Robert Frost photo

Robert Frost 265

American poet 1874–1963

Related quotes

“Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"The Shape of the Fire," ll. 54 - 55
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

“Two men dressed in white jeans with white caps on their heads.... climbing over a large sign of white letters. Of course, the words spell something, but that is unimportant. What is important is their white, and the white of the letters.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951

“The truth is that once you discover something is false you lose interest in it. Man no longer treasures what he thought was genuine once he discovers it is false. In this way truth is its own solution. Self-knowledge is the discovery of the false. You do not have to find what is true: when the false is discarded truth is there. It always was. Just keep observing the fact and the change will come automatically and will he lasting.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

“I used to look at homeless peopleand try to imagine what they had once looked like. It's not easy. Beneath the grime and degradation is a face once adored by someone. It's a truth that tricks the eye; our glances slide away. But something happened to ruin that life, to strip it bare; and it was something small, something that but for the grace of God could take us, too.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 2.

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: The Benefactor (1963), Ch. 1, p. 1, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42012-9

“There is something so intimate about saying the truth out loud. There is something so intimate about hearing the truth said. There is something so intimate about sharing the truth, even if you are not entirely sure what it means.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“The truth lies in black and white.”

Michael Powell (1905–1990) English film director

Attributed

“Tagore once said– art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful.
Now, what is truth? There is no eternal truth. Every artist has to learn private truth though a painful private process. And that is what he has to convey.”

Ritwik Ghatak (1925–1976) Bengali filmmaker and script writer

[Ghatak, Ritwik, Cinema and I, 1987, Ritwik Memorial Trust, 75]

“Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI", in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

“Deniers do not get their views just from simple mistakes about language and truth. Rather, they believe that there is something to worry about in important areas of our thought and in traditional interpretations of those areas; they sense that it has something to do with truth; and (no doubt driven by the familiar desire to say something at once hugely general, deeply important, and reassuringly simple) they extend their worry to the notion of truth itself.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 6

Related topics