Quote

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

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
Belief
Else
Truth
Nothing
Willingly
Believe
Exquisite
Final
Finals
Fiction

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
Wallace Stevens
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Day after day, throughout the winter, We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason In a world of wind and frost.
Wallace Stevens
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Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens
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Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.
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Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens
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The poet is the priest of the invisible.
Wallace Stevens
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A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry increases the feeling for reality.
Wallace Stevens
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You like it under the trees in autumn, because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves and repeats words without menaing.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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The grackles sing avant the spring Most spiss oh! Yes, most spissantly. They sing right puissantly.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a means of redemption.
Wallace Stevens
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New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens
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Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.
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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True villains are extremely photogenic.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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Success as a result of industry is a peasant's ideal.
Wallace Stevens
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Above the forest of the parakeets, A parakeet of parakeets prevails, A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
Wallace Stevens