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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
Imagination
Place
Actuality
Presence
Extraordinary
Consciousness
Takes

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.
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I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.
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Two things of opposite natures seem to depend / One on another, as Logos depends / On Eros, day on night, the imagined On the real. / This is the origin of change.
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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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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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A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.
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The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
Wallace Stevens
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I am the angel of Reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.
Wallace Stevens
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The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.
Wallace Stevens
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If sex were all, then every trembling hand Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
Wallace Stevens
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Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.
Wallace Stevens
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We have been a little insane about the truth. We have had an obsession.
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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What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
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Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
Wallace Stevens
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The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
Wallace Stevens
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We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Wallace Stevens