Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 4

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• 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

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• The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Play, Imagination, Essentials

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.259, Vintage

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• I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.

  Wallace Stevens

  Needs, Bliss, Feels

  Wallace Stevens (2012). “The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• Next to love is the desire for love.

  Wallace Stevens

  Love Is, Desire, Next

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.249, Knopf

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• The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lying, Imagination, Achievement

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• The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

  Wallace Stevens

  Success, Poetry, Intelligence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.184, Knopf

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• The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.

  Wallace Stevens

  Giving, Desire, Reason

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.218, Vintage

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• Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophy, Science, Philosopher

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.248, Vintage

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• Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Power, Growth

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.461, Vintage

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• One must read poetry with one's nerves.

  Wallace Stevens

  Nerves

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• We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

  Wallace Stevens

  Death, Night, Dying

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.351, Vintage

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• The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reading, Writing, Should

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

  4 Copy quote

• The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophy, Philosopher, Poet

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.56, Vintage

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• Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world

  Wallace Stevens

  Inspiration, Men, World

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

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• To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Painting, Problem

  "Opus Posthumou". Book by Wallace Stevens, 1955.

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• Most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it ... if it is true that the style of a poem and the poem itself are one, ... it may be ... that the poets who have little or nothing to say are, or will be, the poets that matter.

  Wallace Stevens

  Art, Poetry, Style

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

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• The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dark, Brightness, Sun

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.137, Vintage

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• As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Terrible, Grows

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.241, Vintage

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• If ever the search for a tranquil belief should end,
  The future might stop emerging out of the past,
  Out of what is full of us; yet the search
  And the future emerging out of us seem to be one.

  Wallace Stevens

  Past, Might, Belief

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.151, Vintage

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• I am one of you and being one of you is being and knowing what I am and know. Yet I am the necessary Angel of earth, since, in my sight, you see the earth again.

  Wallace Stevens

  Angel, Sight, Knowing

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.437, Vintage

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• It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
  And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mind, Woven, Sun

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

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• Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

  Wallace Stevens

  Boys, Echoes, People

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.575, Univ of California Press

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• The greatest poverty is not to live
  In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
  Is too difficult to tell from despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Despair, Desire, World

  Wallace Stevens (1959). “Poems”

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• Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beauty, Art, Would Be

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.303, Univ of California Press

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• The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

  Wallace Stevens

  Believe, Finals, Fiction

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.244, Vintage

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