Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 11

Quotes about:

• Spread outward. Crack the round dome. Break through.
  Have liberty not as the air within a grave
  Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh, my native,
  In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate.

  Wallace Stevens

  Freedom, Hate, Air

  Wallace Stevens (1954). “Collected poems”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• What's down below is in the past
  Like last night's crickets, far below.

  Wallace Stevens

  Past, Night, Lasts

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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• If the hero is not a person, the emblem
  Of him, even if Xenophon, seems
  To stand taller than a person stands, has
  A wider brow, large and less human
  Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body
  Of a primitive.

  Wallace Stevens

  Hero, Eye, Men

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

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• One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls,
  When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops.
  He mocks the guinea, challenges
  The crow, inciting various modes.
  The sparrow requites one, without intent.

  Wallace Stevens

  Challenges, Crow, Gulls

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.233, Vintage

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• Above the forest of the parakeets,
  A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
  A pip of life amid a mort of tails.

  Wallace Stevens

  Tails, Forests, Parakeets

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• A languid janitor bears
  His lantern through colonnades
  And the architecture swoons.

  Wallace Stevens

  Bears, Architecture, Janitor

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.109, Vintage

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• So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio--remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales--we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Whales, Imagination, Brain

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.74, Vintage

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• Success as a result of industry is a peasant's ideal.

  Wallace Stevens

  Results, Peasants, Ideals

  "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town". Book by Charles Bukowski, 1983.

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• Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, People, Religion

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.245, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

  Wallace Stevens

  Gone, Fruit

  1923 Harmonium,'Le Monocle de Mon Oncle', pt.8.

  6 Copy quote

• The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, Real, Play

  7 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

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• 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".

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• It is never the thing but the version of the thing:
  The fragrance of the woman not her self,
  Her self in her manner not the solid block,
  The day in its color not perpending time,
  Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord,
  The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.

  Wallace Stevens

  Time, Block, Self

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.332, Vintage

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• The thinker as reader reads what has been written.
  He wears the words he reads to look upon
  Within his being.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reading, Thinking, Thoughtful

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.492, Vintage

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• 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

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• 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)

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• That tuft of jungle feathers,
  That animal eye,
  Is just what you say. That savage of fire,
  That seed,
  Have it your way. The world is ugly,
  And the people are sad.

  Wallace Stevens

  Eye, Animal, Fire

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game; the ideal is to suggest.

  Wallace Stevens

  Games, Names, Guessing

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• Life is not free from its forms.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life Is, Form

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

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• Imagination...is the irrepressible revolutionist.

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination, Irrepressible

  10 Copy quote

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