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I was myself the compass of that sea: I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

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
Came
Felt
Compass
Found
Walked
World
Sea
Saws
Truly
Strange
Heard

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.
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Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.
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I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
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How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?
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And what's above is in the past As sure as all the angels are.
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Fromage and coffee and cognac and no gods.
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Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
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A change of style is a change of meaning.
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God is gracious to some very peculiar people.
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On a few words of what is real in the world I nourish myself. I defend myself against Whatever remains.
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The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
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The chrysanthemums' astringent fragrance comes Each year to disguise the clanking mechanism Of machine within machine within machine.
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We live in an old chaos of the sun.
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How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
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The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.
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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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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.
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Thought tends to collect in pools.
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The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.
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Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
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