Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most.
  It is older than the oldest speech of Rome.
  This is the tragic accent of the scene.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rome, Speech, Poverty

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.283, Knopf

  5 Copy quote

• Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.

  Wallace Stevens

  Civilization, Saint, Crumbs

  Wallace Stevens (1964). “the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”

  7 Copy quote

• It was evening all afternoon.
  It was snowing
  And it was going to snow.
  The blackbird sat
  In the cedar-limbs.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Snow, Cedars

  Wallace Stevens, John N. Serio, Robert Gantt Steele (2004). “Wallace Stevens”, p.16, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

  23 Copy quote

• Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

  Wallace Stevens

  Love, Dream, Giving

  1923 Harmonium,'Sunday Morning', pt.2.

  7 Copy quote

• How red the rose that is the soldier

  Wallace Stevens

  Rose, Soldier, Red

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.318, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• God is gracious to some very peculiar people.

  Wallace Stevens

  People, Peculiar, Gracious

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.505, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Words of the world are the life of the world.

  Wallace Stevens

  World

  Quoted in Brendan Gill A New York Life (1990).

  4 Copy quote

• I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.

  Wallace Stevens

  Eye, Sea, Tree

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.45, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• Of what is real I say,
  Is it the old, the roseate parent or
  The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else
  The spirit and all ensigns of the self?

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Self, Parent

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

  4 Copy quote

• Soldier, there is a war between the mind
  And sky, between thought and day and night. It is
  For that the poet is always in the sun,
  Patches the moon together in his room
  To his Virgilian cadences, up down,
  Up down. It is a war that never ends.

  Wallace Stevens

  War, Moon, Night

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.302, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees, crusted with snow, And have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers, shagged with ice, the spruces, rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land, full of the same wind, blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing herself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.

  Wallace Stevens

  Time, Winter, Thinking

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.89, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

  Wallace Stevens

  Ice, Sky, January

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

  7 Copy quote

• After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Essence, Redemption

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

  4 Copy quote

• Funest philosophers and ponderers,
  Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophical, Clouds, Speech

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.55, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.

  Wallace Stevens

  Keys, West, Becoming

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.278, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• The physical world is meaningless tonight
  And there is no other.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Tonight, World

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

  4 Copy quote

• Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.

  Wallace Stevens

  Photography, Evil, Cameras

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

  6 Copy quote

• Music falls on the silence like a sense / A passion that we feel, not understand.

  Wallace Stevens

  Fall, Passion, Silence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.287, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Thus the theory of description matters most.
  It is the theory of the word for those
  For whom the word is the making of the world,
  The buzzing world and lisping firmament.

  Wallace Stevens

  World, Matter, Description

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.345, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• The subject matter... is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes.

  Wallace Stevens

  Space, Matter, Scene

  4 Copy quote

• Life consists Of propositions about life. The human Revery is a solitude in which We compose these propositions, torn by dreams, By the terrible incantations of defeats And by the fear that the defeats and the dreams are one. The whole race is a poet that writes down The eccentric propositions of its fate.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dream, Writing, Fate

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

  7 Copy quote

• Fromage and coffee and cognac and no gods.

  Wallace Stevens

  Coffee, Cognac

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.124, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

• The word is the making of the world

  Wallace Stevens

  World

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.182, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

• The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
  Of final belief. So, say that final belief
  Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.

  Wallace Stevens

  Finals, Fiction, Belief

  'Asides on the Oboe'

  4 Copy quote

• The winter is made and you have to bear it,
  The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,
  For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
  In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Winter, Wind

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

  4 Copy quote

Page 9 of 11

First

← Prev

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin