Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

  Wallace Stevens

  Nature, Spring, Silly

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.89, Univ of California Press

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• It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Self, Expression

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.36, Vintage

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• How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rooms, Furniture, Trifles

  "Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens" edited by Holly Stevens, (Ch. 9), 1977.

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• It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.

  Wallace Stevens

  Boredom, Scholar, Ardor

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.300, Vintage

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• One must have a mind of winter
  To regard the frost and the boughs
  Of the pine-trees crusted with snow

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Snow, Tree

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.89, Vintage

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• You know that the nucleus of a time is not
  The poet but the poem, the growth of the mind
  Of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed
  As victory. The poet does not speak in ruins
  Nor stand there making orotund consolations.
  He shares the confusions of intelligence.

  Wallace Stevens

  Confusion, Poetry, Effort

  Wallace Stevens (1964). “the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”

  4 Copy quote

• In a world of universal poverty
  The philosophers alone will be fat
  Against the autumn winds
  In an autumn that will be perpetual.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophical, Autumn, Wind

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.152, Vintage

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• The heavy trees,
  The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust,
  The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines
  Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths.

  Wallace Stevens

  Blue, Tree, Feelings

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.191, Vintage

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• Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Achieve, Music Is

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.318, Vintage

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• On a few words of what is real in the world
  I nourish myself. I defend myself against
  Whatever remains.

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, World, Few Words

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.308, Vintage

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• How cold the vacancy
  When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist
  First sees reality. The mortal no
  Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Vacancy, Gone

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

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• Trees Trees, proud standing people stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying glorious attention, breathing light. strength shelter timeless confidence bending and firm comforting rooted chorus line dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds framing bursts of stars tender rugged celebration absorbing and releasing life each holy branch holding the power of the Universe. There.

  Wallace Stevens

  Stars, Power, Moon

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• Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me, life is an affair of places and that is the trouble.

  Wallace Stevens

  People, Life Is, Trouble

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.240, Vintage

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• Beneath every no lays a passion for yes that had never been broken.

  Wallace Stevens

  Passion, Acceptance, Broken

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.331, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• And what's above is in the past
  As sure as all the angels are.

  Wallace Stevens

  Angel, Past, Heaven

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

  4 Copy quote

• the windy sky
  
  Cries out a literate despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sky, Despair, Cry

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.87, Knopf

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• What is there in life except one's ideas,
  Good air, good friend, what is there in life?

  Wallace Stevens

  Good Friend, Air, Ideas

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.200, Vintage

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• After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.

  Wallace Stevens

  Fall, Autumn, Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.469, Vintage

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• Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.

  Wallace Stevens

  Thinking, Epidemics, Infection

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.240, Vintage

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• In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.

  Wallace Stevens

  Hands, Giving, Gold

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.90, Univ of California Press

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• behold
  The approach of him whom none believes,
  Whom all believe that all believe,
  A pagan in a varnished car.

  Wallace Stevens

  Believe, Car, Pagan

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.170, Vintage

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• Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

  Wallace Stevens

  Literature, Inappropriate, Source

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.256, Vintage

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• I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

  Wallace Stevens

  Noble, Accents, Rhythm

  1923 Harmonium,'Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird', pt.8.

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• There is not any haunt of prophecy,
  Nor any old chimera of the grave,
  Neither the golden underground, nor isle
  Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
  Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
  Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
  As April's green endures; or will endure
  Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
  Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
  By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

  Wallace Stevens

  Spring, Home, June

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.22, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Ice, Sky

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.319, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

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