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in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.

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
Consciousness
Takes
Imagination
Place
Actuality
Presence
Extraordinary

More quotes by 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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One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guinea, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting.
Wallace Stevens
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Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me, life is an affair of places and that is the trouble.
Wallace Stevens
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Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens
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Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.
Wallace Stevens
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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
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The muddy rivers of spring Are snarling Under the muddy skies. The mind is muddy.
Wallace Stevens
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Imagination is the will of things. . . .
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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Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.
Wallace Stevens
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After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.
Wallace Stevens
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After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends.
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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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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Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.
Wallace Stevens