Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The imperfect is our paradise.

  Wallace Stevens

  Paradise, Imperfect

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.218, Vintage

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• I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.

  Wallace Stevens

  Needs, Bliss, Feels

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.

  Wallace Stevens

  Strange, Nonsense, Relation

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.383, Vintage

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• The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

  Wallace Stevens

  Success, Poetry, Intelligence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.184, Knopf

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• The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.

  Wallace Stevens

  Giving, Desire, Reason

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.218, Vintage

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• The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.

  Wallace Stevens

  Opposites, Imagination, Abnormal

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.153, Vintage

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• The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reading, Writing, Should

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

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• Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

  Wallace Stevens

  Feelings, Emotion, Sentimentality

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

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• Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Power, Growth

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.461, Vintage

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• The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

  Wallace Stevens

  Food, Ice Cream, Cooking

  "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" l. 7 (1923)

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• The poet is the priest of the invisible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Invisible, Priests

  Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

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• 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

  Morning, Kings, Thrones

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• I was myself the compass of that sea: I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sea, World, Saws

  Wallace Stevens (2005). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.65, Courier Corporation

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• After the final no there comes a yes
  And on that yes the future world depends.

  Wallace Stevens

  Inspirational, Teaching, Future

  "Harmonium". Book by Wallace Stevens, 1923.

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• Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beautiful, Mother, Flower

  12 Copy quote

• It is never the thing but the version of the thing.

  Wallace Stevens

  Versions

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

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• Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

  Wallace Stevens

  Perception, Essentials, Artificial

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.246, Vintage

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• A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.

  Wallace Stevens

  Order, Two, Violent

  "Connoisseur of Chaos" l. 1 (1942)

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• To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Painting, Problem

  "Opus Posthumou". Book by Wallace Stevens, 1955.

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• An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church, but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses.

  Wallace Stevens

  Religious, Religion, Church

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.58, Univ of California Press

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• A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

  Wallace Stevens

  Writing, Men, Poetry

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• As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Terrible, Grows

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.241, Vintage

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• The night
  Makes everything grotesque. Is it because
  Night is the nature of man's interior world?

  Wallace Stevens

  Night, Men, World

  Wallace Stevens, Jos e Rodr iguez Feo, Beverly Coyle, Alan Filreis (1986). “Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens & José Rodríguez Feo”, p.14, Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press

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• It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rain, Fall, Winter

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.179, Vintage

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• The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dark, Brightness, Sun

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.137, Vintage

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