Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Realism is a corruption of reality.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Corruption, Realism

  11 Copy quote

• The imperfect is our paradise.

  Wallace Stevens

  Paradise, Imperfect

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.218, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.

  Wallace Stevens

  Style

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.351, Vintage

  12 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

  8 Copy quote

• All poetry is experimental poetry.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Poetry Is

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

  5 Copy quote

• One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.

  Wallace Stevens

  Time, Important, Modern

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.255, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• Poetry is a means of redemption.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mean, Poetry, Redemption

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

  8 Copy quote

• I do not know which to prefer -
  The beauty of inflections
  Or the beauty of innuendoes,
  The blackbird whistling
  Or just after.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beauty, Music, Silence

  'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' (1923)

  37 Copy quote

• After the final no there comes a yes
  And on that yes the future world depends.

  Wallace Stevens

  Inspirational, Teaching, Future

  "Harmonium". Book by Wallace Stevens, 1923.

  7 Copy quote

• It is the belief and not the god that counts.

  Wallace Stevens

  Belief

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.243, Vintage

  5 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

  18 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

  5 Copy quote

• They said, 'You have a blue guitar, / You do not play things as they are.' / The man replied, 'Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.'

  Wallace Stevens

  Men, Play, Blue

  'The Man with the Blue Guitar' (1937)

  8 Copy quote

• The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.

  Wallace Stevens

  Old Things, People, Life And Death

  6 Copy quote

• Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Made

  7 Copy quote

• Poetry increases the feeling for reality.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Feelings, Increase

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.243, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Imagination is the will of things. . . .

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.58, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

• Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry Is, Abstraction

  10 Copy quote

• To live in the world but outside of existing conceptions of it.

  Wallace Stevens

  World, Conception

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.246, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.

  Wallace Stevens

  Opposites, Imagination, Abnormal

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.153, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Dresses, Worms

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

  15 Copy quote

• Life is the elimination of what is dead.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life Is, Elimination

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

  8 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

  5 Copy quote

• Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

  Wallace Stevens

  Feelings, Emotion, Sentimentality

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

  13 Copy quote

• All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.

  Wallace Stevens

  Nature, Ideas, Tree

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

  5 Copy quote

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