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.
About Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevenswas an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.
More quotes from Wallace Stevens
Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
American poet
One cannot spend one’s time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.
American poet
The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
American poet
It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
American poet
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.
American poet
Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
American poet
Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.
American poet
The imagination is man’s power over nature.
American poet
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.
American poet
The fire burns as the novel taught it how.
American poet
Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.
American poet
After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.
American poet
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
American poet
We say God and the imagination are one… How high that highest candle lights the dark.
American poet
Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.
American poet
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.
American poet
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
American poet
A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
American poet
How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
American poet
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
American poet
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.
American poet
The point of vision and desire are the same.
American poet
As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
American poet
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
American poet
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.
American poet
Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!
American poet
The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
American poet
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.
American poet
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
American poet
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.
American poet
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
American poet
Money is a kind of poetry.
American poet
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
American poet
The poet is the priest of the invisible.
American poet
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.
American poet
The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.
American poet
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
American poet
I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after.
American poet
A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
American poet
In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
American poet
The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
American poet
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.
American poet
One’s ignorance is one’s chief asset.
American poet