Wallace Stevens Quotes

I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.

One must read poetry with one's nerves.

Poetry is the scholar's art.

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

The wind shifts like this: Like a human without illusions, Who still feels irrational things within her.

It gives a man character as a poet to have a daily contact with a job. I doubt whether I've lost a thing by leading an exceedingly regular and disciplined life.

It is never the thing but the version of the thing.

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.

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.

The mind is smaller than the eye.

The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

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

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

Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds on my spirit make a music too.

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.

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

Poetry increases the feeling for reality.

The sea Severs not only lands but also selves.

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

The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself.

The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.

Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point.

What is one man among so many men? What are so many men in such a world? Can one man think one thing and think it long? Can one man be one thing and be it long?

It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.

My tribute to mystical, magical trees that the Cherokee called "standing people. . . ."

The fire burns as the novel taught it how.

All poetry is experimental poetry.

A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

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

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

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

The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin.

The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

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

The muddy rivers of spring Are snarling Under the muddy skies. The mind is muddy.

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

Thought tends to collect in pools.

The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy, we depend Upon it.

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.

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

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

What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks And far beyond the discords of the wind.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

Unless we believe in the hero, what is there To believe? Incisive what, the fellow Of what good. Devise. Make him of mud.

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

Already the new-born children interpret love In the voices of mothers.

Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night, How is it I find you in difference, see you there In a moving contour, a change not quite completed? You are familiar yet an aberration.