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It is never the thing but the version of the thing.

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
Never
Version
Versions
Thing

More quotes by 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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And what's above is in the past As sure as all the angels are.
Wallace Stevens
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It may be that the ignorant man, alone, Has any chance to mate his life with life That is the sensual, pearly spouse, the life That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.
Wallace Stevens
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The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He wears the words he reads to look upon Within his being.
Wallace Stevens
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To live in the world but outside of existing conceptions of it.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens
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Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.
Wallace Stevens
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The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.
Wallace Stevens
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I have said no To everything, in order to get at myself. I have wiped away moonlight like mud.
Wallace Stevens
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The death of Satan was a tragedy For the imagination.
Wallace Stevens
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Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.
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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The physical world is meaningless tonight And there is no other.
Wallace Stevens
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We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a means of redemption.
Wallace Stevens
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How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?
Wallace Stevens
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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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How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. The mortal no Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.
Wallace Stevens
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It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
Wallace Stevens