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Home
Authors
Wallace Stevens
American
Poet
About the author
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Truth
Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Reality
Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Poor
#Silly
#Spring
Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#People
#Feeling
#Poetry
#Listening
#Water
Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#God
#Style
#Man
#Nature
#Dress
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Time
#Being
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Nothing
#American
#English
#Americans
#Literature
#Sensibility
Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Value
The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Day
#Sun
#Evening
New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Walking
Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Thinking
#Observation
#Accuracy
The fire burns as the novel taught it how.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Fire
One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Ignorance
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Beauty
How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Thoughts
#Trifles
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Life
#Poetry
Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Death
#Dreams
#Mother
#Beauty
#Fulfillment
After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#World
#Future
A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#World
#Man
#Woman
A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Nature
#Meaning
Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#People
#Art
#Religion
#Intolerance
Money is a kind of poetry.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Money
#Poetry
It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Boredom
As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Life
#Literature
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Mind
In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Words
#World
#Imagination
#Nature
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Love
#Words
#Ideas
#Poetry
If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#People
#Forget
#Sex
#Egotism
If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Bible
#Needs
#Poetry
#Aspirations
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
The point of vision and desire are the same.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Vision
#Desire
The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Nothing
#Reason
#Desire
The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#World
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Thought
#Thoughts
The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Existence
The poet is the priest of the invisible.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#World
The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Man
#Imagination
#Power
#Nature
The genuine artist is never "true to life." He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Life
#Art
#Play
#Artist
#Actors
To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Life
#Imagination
#Mind
#Metaphysics
We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#God
#Imagination
What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.
Wallace Stevens,
American
Poet
#Life
#May
#Eyes
#Reality