Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 10

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
  Between the two we live and die
  The broken cartwheel on the hill.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Country, Blue

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.359, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night,
  How is it I find you in difference, see you there
  In a moving contour, a change not quite completed?
  You are familiar yet an aberration.

  Wallace Stevens

  Girl, Summer, Moving

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.301, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It may be that the ignorant man, alone,
  Has any chance to mate his life with life
  That is the sensual, pearly spouse, the life
  That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Men, Ignorant

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.231, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• There's no such thing as life; or if there is,
  It is faster than the weather, faster than
  Any character. It is more than any scene:
  Of the guillotine or of any glamorous hanging.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Character, Weather

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.192, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• At evening casual flocks of pigeons make
  Ambiguous undulations as they sink
  Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

  Wallace Stevens

  Wings, Poetry, Darkness

  'Sunday Morning, I' (1923)

  7 Copy quote

• Unless we believe in the hero, what is there
  To believe? Incisive what, the fellow
  Of what good. Devise. Make him of mud.

  Wallace Stevens

  Believe, Hero, Mud

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.269, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Pain, Loneliness

  Wallace Stevens (2002). “Harmonium”, p.105, Icaria Editorial

  6 Copy quote

• I placed a jar in Tennessee,
  And round it was, upon a hill.
  It made the slovenly wilderness
  Surround that hill.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, Nature, Tennessee

  "Anecdote of the Jar" l. 1 (1923)

  4 Copy quote

• It is easy to suppose that few people realize on that occasion, which comes to all of us, when we look at the blue sky for the first time, that is to say: not merely see it, but look at it and experience it and for the first time have a sense that we live in the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there - few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings.

  Wallace Stevens

  Blue, Sky, People

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.65, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow & they would if poets wrote it.

  Wallace Stevens

  Children, People, Snow

  "Letters of Wallace Stevens".

  4 Copy quote

• The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
  And far beyond the discords of the wind.

  Wallace Stevens

  Swans, Wind, Soul

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.4, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• LIGHT FROM WITHIN my friend, cancer got you damn it: you had it beat for seven years at least. how did it come back? Why all that pain. again. and you, such a fighter you fought me over and over with tears and words and promises. you fought for me with honesty and a light so bright it hurts my heart. sweet lorna. at peace now finally no more battles, just light from within a flickering candle in the dark burns with you.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sweet, Hurt, Peace

  4 Copy quote

• Like the Sweetness of Gardenias Mother, you died 15 years ago. pain, a rapier, cut until, finally, there was just peace like the sweetness of gardenias in the crystal vase on your yellow kitchen table. so fragrant. your voice lingers in my ear reminding, scolding, guiding a pleasant mantra of tenderness, magic words that move my palms, your palms. together we are molding, helping, creating. in the mirror I see your eyes, your beautiful brown circles looking back, so radiant. "don't forget me," you whispered the day you died. I won't.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beautiful, Mother, Peace

  16 Copy quote

• The mind is the great poem of winter, the man,
  Who, to find what will suffice,
  Destroys romantic tenements
  Of rose and ice.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Men, Ice

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.238, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• It was autumn and falling stars
  Covered the shrivelled forms
  Crouched in the moonlight.

  Wallace Stevens

  Stars, Fall, Autumn

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.147, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Thought tends to collect in pools.

  Wallace Stevens

  Pool

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

  4 Copy quote

• Money is a kind of poetry.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Kind, Making Money

  Quoted in Harper's, Oct 1985.

  7 Copy quote

• The wind,
  Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry,
  Came bluntly thundering, more terrible
  Than the revenge of music on bassoons.

  Wallace Stevens

  Revenge, Wind, Cry

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.100, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• The muddy rivers of spring
  Are snarling
  Under the muddy skies.
  The mind is muddy.

  Wallace Stevens

  Spring, Rivers, Sky

  4 Copy quote

• The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Winter, Clouds

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.429, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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