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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

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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
American
Inappropriate
Nothing
Sensibility
British
English
Americans
Source
Since
Literature

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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It is never the thing but the version of the thing: The fragrance of the woman not her self, Her self in her manner not the solid block, The day in its color not perpending time, Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord, The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.
Wallace Stevens
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It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.
Wallace Stevens
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The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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The sea Severs not only lands but also selves.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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The wind, Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, Came bluntly thundering, more terrible Than the revenge of music on bassoons.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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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
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Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.
Wallace Stevens
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One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens
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After a lustre of the moon, we say We have not the need of any paradise, We have not the need of any seducing hymn.
Wallace Stevens
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Death is the mother of Beauty hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.
Wallace Stevens
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Life is the elimination of what is dead.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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It is time that beats in the breast and it is time That batters against the mind, silent and proud, The mind that knows it is destroyed by time.
Wallace Stevens