Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

  Wallace Stevens

  Nature, Spring, Silly

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.89, Univ of California Press

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• Life is the elimination of what is dead.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life Is, Elimination

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.250, Vintage

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• On a few words of what is real in the world
  I nourish myself. I defend myself against
  Whatever remains.

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, World, Few Words

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.308, Vintage

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• How cold the vacancy
  When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist
  First sees reality. The mortal no
  Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Vacancy, Gone

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

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• Trees Trees, proud standing people stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying glorious attention, breathing light. strength shelter timeless confidence bending and firm comforting rooted chorus line dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds framing bursts of stars tender rugged celebration absorbing and releasing life each holy branch holding the power of the Universe. There.

  Wallace Stevens

  Stars, Power, Moon

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• Beneath every no lays a passion for yes that had never been broken.

  Wallace Stevens

  Passion, Acceptance, Broken

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

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• Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me, life is an affair of places and that is the trouble.

  Wallace Stevens

  People, Life Is, Trouble

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.240, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• And what's above is in the past
  As sure as all the angels are.

  Wallace Stevens

  Angel, Past, Heaven

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.80, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

• It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.

  Wallace Stevens

  Boredom, Scholar, Ardor

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.300, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• The heavy trees,
  The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust,
  The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines
  Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths.

  Wallace Stevens

  Blue, Tree, Feelings

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.191, Vintage

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• Most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it ... if it is true that the style of a poem and the poem itself are one, ... it may be ... that the poets who have little or nothing to say are, or will be, the poets that matter.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, Poetry, Style

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

  4 Copy quote

• What is there in life except one's ideas,
  Good air, good friend, what is there in life?

  Wallace Stevens

  Good Friend, Air, Ideas

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.200, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.

  Wallace Stevens

  Fall, Autumn, Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.469, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• the windy sky
  
  Cries out a literate despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sky, Despair, Cry

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.87, Knopf

  7 Copy quote

• Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.

  Wallace Stevens

  Thinking, Epidemics, Infection

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.240, Vintage

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• In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.

  Wallace Stevens

  Hands, Giving, Gold

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.90, Univ of California Press

  5 Copy quote

• behold
  The approach of him whom none believes,
  Whom all believe that all believe,
  A pagan in a varnished car.

  Wallace Stevens

  Believe, Car, Pagan

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.170, Vintage

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• Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Inappropriate, Source

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.256, Vintage

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• I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

  Wallace Stevens

  Noble, Accents, Rhythm

  1923 Harmonium,'Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird', pt.8.

  20 Copy quote

• To lose sensibility, to see what one sees,
  As if sight had not its own miraculous thrift,
  To hear only what one hears, one meaning alone,
  As if the paradise of meaning ceased
  To be paradise, it is this to be destitute.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophy, Sight, Medicine

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

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• The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate.

  Wallace Stevens

  Writing, Fate, Race

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.356, Vintage

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• There is not any haunt of prophecy,
  Nor any old chimera of the grave,
  Neither the golden underground, nor isle
  Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
  Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
  Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
  As April's green endures; or will endure
  Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
  Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
  By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

  Wallace Stevens

  Spring, Home, June

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.22, Vintage

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• The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Ice, Sky

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.319, Vintage

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• One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mean, Doe, Culture

  "Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens" edited by Holly Stevens, (Ch. 3), 1977.

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• Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.

  Wallace Stevens

  Clouds, Understanding, Three

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.57, Vintage

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