Wallace Stevens Quotes
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God is in me or else is not at all (does not exist).
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The imagination is man's power over nature.
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Bethou me, said sparrow, to the crackled blade, And you, and you, bethou me as you blow, When in my coppice you behold me be.
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Place honey on the altars and die, You lovers that are bitter at heart.
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My candle burned alone in an immense valley. Beams of the huge night converged upon it, Until the wind blew. Then beams of the huge night Converged upon its image, Until the wind blew.
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Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns, Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous, Eliciting the still sustaining pomps Of speech which are like music so profound They seem an exaltation without sound.
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The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.
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They married well because the marriage-place Was what they loved. It was neither heaven nor hell. They were love’s characters come face to face.
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In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
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An unaffected man in a negative light Could not have borne his labor nor have died Sighing that he should leave the banjo’s twang.
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It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
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A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.
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For the poet, the imagination is paramount, and . . . he dwells apart in his imagination, as the philosopher dwells in his reason, and as the priest dwells in his belief … The imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.'
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Is there a poem that never reaches words And one that chaffers the time away? Is the poem both peculiar and general? There’s a meditation there, in which there seemsTo be an evasion, a thing not apprehended or Not apprehended well. Does the poet Evade us, as in a senseless element?
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Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
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Death is the mother of beauty
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I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after.
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What is divinity if it can comeOnly in silent shadows and in dreams?
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The poet is a god, or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp.
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Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good.
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On a blue island in a sky-wide water The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear, Long after the planter’s death.
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O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
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Yet voluble of dumb violence. You look Across the roofs as sigil and as ward And in your centre mark them and are cowed . . .
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The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse Suggested that, at the final funeral, The music halted and the horse stood still.