Quote

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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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Beyond
Rooms
Cloud
Walks
Consists
Four
Hills
Understanding
Clouds
Three
Surface
Things
Walk
World
Room

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.
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One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.
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One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
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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.
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The heavy trees, The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust, The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths.
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Thought tends to collect in pools.
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Words of the world are the life of the world.
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Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
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The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.
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Life is the elimination of what is dead.
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After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends.
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To lose sensibility, to see what one sees, As if sight had not its own miraculous thrift, To hear only what one hears, one meaning alone, As if the paradise of meaning ceased To be paradise, it is this to be destitute.
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We say This changes and that changes. Thus the constant Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause In a universe of inconstancy.
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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.
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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.
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The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us.
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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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A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.
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The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens
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The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.
Wallace Stevens