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The imperfect is our paradise.

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
Paradise
Imperfect

More quotes by 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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One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens
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A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
Wallace Stevens
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If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.
Wallace Stevens
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The fire burns as the novel taught it how.
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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What is there in life except one's ideas, Good air, good friend, what is there in life?
Wallace Stevens
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Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world
Wallace Stevens
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Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.
Wallace Stevens
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The sea Severs not only lands but also selves.
Wallace Stevens
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The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens
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The magnificent cause of being, The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world.
Wallace Stevens
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Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a means of redemption.
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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Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
Wallace Stevens
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Man is an eternal sophomore.
Wallace Stevens
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Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Wallace Stevens