Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 11

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Thought tends to collect in pools.

Wallace Stevens

Pool

Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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The muddy rivers of spring
Are snarling
Under the muddy skies.
The mind is muddy.

Wallace Stevens

Spring, Rivers, Sky

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Imagination...is the irrepressible revolutionist.

Wallace Stevens

Imagination, Irrepressible

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It is never the thing but the version of the thing:
The fragrance of the woman not her self,
Her self in her manner not the solid block,
The day in its color not perpending time,
Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord,
The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.

Wallace Stevens

Time, Block, Self

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.332, Vintage

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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

Art, Real, Play

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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

Sex, People, Political

Holly Stevens, Wallace Stevens (1977). “Souvenirs and prophecies: the young Wallace Stevens”, Random House Inc

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The thinker as reader reads what has been written.
He wears the words he reads to look upon
Within his being.

Wallace Stevens

Reading, Thinking, Thoughtful

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.492, Vintage

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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

New York, Stupid, Walking Away

Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.38, Univ of California Press

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Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

Wallace Stevens

Gone, Fruit

1923 Harmonium,'Le Monocle de Mon Oncle', pt.8.

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Success as a result of industry is a peasant's ideal.

Wallace Stevens

Results, Peasants, Ideals

"The Most Beautiful Woman in Town". Book by Charles Bukowski, 1983.

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Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.

Wallace Stevens

Art, People, Religion

Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.245, Vintage

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Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting.

Wallace Stevens

Ethics, Painting

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Life is not free from its forms.

Wallace Stevens

Life Is, Form

Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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Spread outward. Crack the round dome. Break through.
Have liberty not as the air within a grave
Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh, my native,
In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate.

Wallace Stevens

Freedom, Hate, Air

Wallace Stevens (1954). “Collected poems”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

Wallace Stevens

Time, Men, Speech

1942 Parts of a World,'Of Modern Poetry'.

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If the hero is not a person, the emblem
Of him, even if Xenophon, seems
To stand taller than a person stands, has
A wider brow, large and less human
Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body
Of a primitive.

Wallace Stevens

Hero, Eye, Men

Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls,
When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops.
He mocks the guinea, challenges
The crow, inciting various modes.
The sparrow requites one, without intent.

Wallace Stevens

Challenges, Crow, Gulls

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.233, Vintage

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A languid janitor bears
His lantern through colonnades
And the architecture swoons.

Wallace Stevens

Bears, Architecture, Janitor

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.109, Vintage

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So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio--remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales--we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.

Wallace Stevens

Whales, Imagination, Brain

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.74, Vintage

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The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.

Wallace Stevens

Belief, Fury, Magnificent

Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.446, Univ of California Press

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After a lustre of the moon, we say
We have not the need of any paradise,
We have not the need of any seducing hymn.

Wallace Stevens

Moon, Hymns, Needs

Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.290, Vintage

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That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say. That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way. The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens

Eye, Animal, Fire

Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game; the ideal is to suggest.

Wallace Stevens

Games, Names, Guessing

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Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.

Wallace Stevens

Tails, Forests, Parakeets

Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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Born: October 2, 1879
Died: August 2, 1955
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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