Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Night, Perfection

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.358, Vintage

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• The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophy, Philosopher, Poet

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.56, Vintage

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• The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Play, Imagination, Essentials

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.259, Vintage

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• There may be always a time of innocence.
  There is never a place.

  Wallace Stevens

  May, Innocence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.418, Vintage

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• 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

  Boys, Echoes, People

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.575, Univ of California Press

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• The greatest poverty is not to live
  In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
  Is too difficult to tell from despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Despair, Desire, World

  Wallace Stevens (1959). “Poems”

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• If ever the search for a tranquil belief should end,
  The future might stop emerging out of the past,
  Out of what is full of us; yet the search
  And the future emerging out of us seem to be one.

  Wallace Stevens

  Past, Might, Belief

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.151, Vintage

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• We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

  Wallace Stevens

  Death, Night, Dying

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.351, Vintage

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• The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.

  Wallace Stevens

  Cities, Want, Letting You Go

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• Imagination is the will of things. . . .

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.58, Courier Corporation

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• The sea
  Severs not only lands but also selves.

  Wallace Stevens

  Self, Sea, Land

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.30, Vintage

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• The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mind, Poet

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

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• Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beauty, Mother, Dream

  Wallace Stevens (2002). “Harmonium”, p.107, Icaria Editorial

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• It gives a man character as a poet to have a daily contact with a job. I doubt whether I've lost a thing by leading an exceedingly regular and disciplined life.

  Wallace Stevens

  Jobs, Character, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Make the visible a little hard to see.

  Wallace Stevens

  Littles, Visible, Hard

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.311, Vintage

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• Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry Is, Abstraction

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• Disillusion is the last illusion.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lasts, Illusion, Disillusion

  12 Copy quote

• To live in the world but outside of existing conceptions of it.

  Wallace Stevens

  World, Conception

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

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• Poetry is the scholar's art.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, Scholar, Poetry Is

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.248, Vintage

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• The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lying, Imagination, Achievement

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• 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

  Needs, Rivals, Addresses

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.144, Vintage

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• The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book.

  Wallace Stevens

  Book, House, World

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.358, Vintage

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• It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
  And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mind, Woven, Sun

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.211, Vintage

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• I have said no
  To everything, in order to get at myself.
  I have wiped away moonlight like mud.

  Wallace Stevens

  Order, Rejection, Mud

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.143, Knopf

  11 Copy quote

• in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination, Consciousness, Extraordinary

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.411, Univ of California Press

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