Wallace Stevens Quotes

Quotes about:

• The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination, Force, Forces Of Nature

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

  59 Copy quote

• Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

  Wallace Stevens

  Truth, Lakes, Hiking

  "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction". Poem by Wallace Stevens, 1942.

  52 Copy quote

• Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Metaphor

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.260, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dark, Light, Definitions

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.183, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

  Wallace Stevens

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Travel

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.249, Vintage

  45 Copy quote

• It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

  Wallace Stevens

  Everyday, World

  31 Copy quote

• I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

  Wallace Stevens

  Crush, Men, Garden

  32 Copy quote

• Poetry is a finikin thing of air
  That lives uncertainly and not for long
  Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

  Wallace Stevens

  Air, Long, Poetry

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.155, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

  Wallace Stevens

  People, Water, Shapes

  21 Copy quote

• The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

  Wallace Stevens

  Journey, World, Way

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

  44 Copy quote

• The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us.

  Wallace Stevens

  Would Be, World, Desolate

  Wallace Stevens (1951). “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting”

  19 Copy quote

• Realism is a corruption of reality.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Corruption, Realism

  9 Copy quote

• Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse
  Without a rider on a road at night.
  The mind sits listening and hears it pass.

  Wallace Stevens

  Running, Time, Horse

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.339, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• True villains are extremely photogenic.

  Wallace Stevens

  Villain, Photogenic

  132 Copy quote

• It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.

  Wallace Stevens

  Thinking, Differences, Entrepreneur

  Wallace Stevens (1966). “Letters”

  9 Copy quote

• A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poet

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.32, Vintage

  3 Copy quote

• The poet is the priest of the invisible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Invisible, Priests

  Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

  Wallace Stevens

  Political, Poetic, Economic

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.17, Vintage

  85 Copy quote

• Anything is beautiful if you say it is.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beautiful, Ifs

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.213, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  79 Copy quote

• The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.

  Wallace Stevens

  Light, People, Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.29, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have.

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Imagination, Vitality

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.6, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• Disillusion is the last illusion.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lasts, Illusion, Disillusion

  11 Copy quote

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

  Wallace Stevens

  Writing, Men, Poetry

  15 Copy quote

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