Wallace Stevens Quotes - Page 9

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• One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

  Wallace Stevens

  Mean, Doe, Culture

  "Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens" edited by Holly Stevens, (Ch. 3), 1977.

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• Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.

  Wallace Stevens

  Clouds, Understanding, Three

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.57, Vintage

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• Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.

  Wallace Stevens

  Civilization, Saint, Crumbs

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

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• It was evening all afternoon.
  It was snowing
  And it was going to snow.
  The blackbird sat
  In the cedar-limbs.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Snow, Cedars

  Wallace Stevens, John N. Serio, Robert Gantt Steele (2004). “Wallace Stevens”, p.16, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

  Wallace Stevens

  Love, Dream, Giving

  1923 Harmonium,'Sunday Morning', pt.2.

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• It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most.
  It is older than the oldest speech of Rome.
  This is the tragic accent of the scene.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rome, Speech, Poverty

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.283, Knopf

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• This mangled, smutted semi-world hacked out
  Of dirt . . . It is not possible for the moon
  To blot this with its dove-winged blendings.

  Wallace Stevens

  Moon, World, Dirt

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.119, Vintage

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• How red the rose that is the soldier

  Wallace Stevens

  Rose, Soldier, Red

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.318, Vintage

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• It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

  Wallace Stevens

  Ice, Sky, January

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

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• Soldier, there is a war between the mind
  And sky, between thought and day and night. It is
  For that the poet is always in the sun,
  Patches the moon together in his room
  To his Virgilian cadences, up down,
  Up down. It is a war that never ends.

  Wallace Stevens

  War, Moon, Night

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.302, Vintage

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• The physical world is meaningless tonight
  And there is no other.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Tonight, World

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

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• Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.

  Wallace Stevens

  Keys, West, Becoming

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.278, Univ of California Press

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• After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Essence, Redemption

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

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• God is gracious to some very peculiar people.

  Wallace Stevens

  People, Peculiar, Gracious

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.505, Univ of California Press

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• Words of the world are the life of the world.

  Wallace Stevens

  World

  Quoted in Brendan Gill A New York Life (1990).

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• The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
  Of final belief. So, say that final belief
  Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.

  Wallace Stevens

  Finals, Fiction, Belief

  'Asides on the Oboe'

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• Music falls on the silence like a sense / A passion that we feel, not understand.

  Wallace Stevens

  Fall, Passion, Silence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.287, Vintage

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• A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.

  Wallace Stevens

  Eye, Men, Light

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.30, Univ of California Press

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• Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.

  Wallace Stevens

  Photography, Evil, Cameras

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

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• The winter is made and you have to bear it,
  The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,
  For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
  In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Winter, Wind

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

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• The subject matter... is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes.

  Wallace Stevens

  Space, Matter, Scene

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• Funest philosophers and ponderers,
  Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophical, Clouds, Speech

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.55, Vintage

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• Of what is real I say,
  Is it the old, the roseate parent or
  The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else
  The spirit and all ensigns of the self?

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Self, Parent

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

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• Cold is our element and winter's air
  Brings voices as of lions coming down.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Air, Voice

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.134, Vintage

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• Life consists Of propositions about life. The human Revery is a solitude in which We compose these propositions, torn by dreams, By the terrible incantations of defeats And by the fear that the defeats and the dreams are one. The whole race is a poet that writes down The eccentric propositions of its fate.

  Wallace Stevens

  Dream, Writing, Fate

  Holly Stevens, Wallace Stevens (1977). “Souvenirs and prophecies: the young Wallace Stevens”, Random House Inc

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