Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• The wind had seized the tree and ha, and ha,
  It held the shivering, the shaken limbs,
  Then bathed its body in the leaping lake.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lakes, Wind, Tree

  Wallace Stevens (1954). “Collected poems”

  5 Copy quote

• Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill.

  Wallace Stevens

  Children, Foxes, Hills

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.183, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.

  Wallace Stevens

  God, Fashion, Men

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

  9 Copy quote

• The death of Satan was a tragedy
  For the imagination.

  Wallace Stevens

  Imagination, Tragedy, Satan

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.319, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

  Wallace Stevens

  Moving, Rivers, Flying

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.94, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• Revolution
  Is the affair of logical lunatics.

  Wallace Stevens

  Revolution, Affair, Logical

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.324, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need for imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires. Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang?

  Wallace Stevens

  Death, Mother, Dream

  Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”

  4 Copy quote

• We have been a little insane about the truth. We have had an obsession.

  Wallace Stevens

  Truth, Insane, Littles

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.33, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.

  Wallace Stevens

  Nature, Butterfly, Men

  Title of poem (1923)

  9 Copy quote

• I am the angel of Reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.

  Wallace Stevens

  Angel, Reality, Doors

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

  6 Copy quote

• A pear should come to the table popped with juice, Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On terms Like these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.

  Wallace Stevens

  Autumn, Juice, Tables

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.155, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• Perhaps there is a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagines are one: a state of clairvoyant observation, accessible or possibly accessible to the poet or, say, the acutest poet.

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Poetry, Perception

  6 Copy quote

• Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Beauty, Mind

  Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 4

  9 Copy quote

• Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.

  Wallace Stevens

  Wise, Fall, Autumn

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.158, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• If sex were all, then every trembling hand
  Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sex, Hands, Dolls

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.74, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Book, Night

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.358, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice

  Wallace Stevens

  Coffee, Sacrifice, Orange

  Harmonium (1923) "Sunday Morning, I"

  7 Copy quote

• You like it under the trees in autumn, because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves and repeats words without menaing.

  Wallace Stevens

  Moving, Fall, Autumn

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.288, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
  Within whose burning bosom we devise
  Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beauty, Mother, Waiting

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.44, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

• In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.

  Wallace Stevens

  Spring, Moon, Clouds

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.288, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.

  Wallace Stevens

  God, Religious, Easter

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.193, Univ of California Press

  11 Copy quote

• Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.

  Wallace Stevens

  Beach, Spring, Florida

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.52, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.

  Wallace Stevens

  Eye, Reality, Meditation

  Wallace Stevens, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery (1989). “Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujects: Wallace Stevens' Commonplace Book”, p.12, Stanford University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

  Wallace Stevens

  Perception, Mind, Essentials

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

  4 Copy quote

• The imperfect is our paradise.
  Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
  Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
  Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

  Wallace Stevens

  Lying, Perfection, Sound

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

  4 Copy quote

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