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It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.

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
Courage
Amateur
Originality
Necessary

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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It is time that beats in the breast and it is time That batters against the mind, silent and proud, The mind that knows it is destroyed by time.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
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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Spread outward. Crack the round dome. Break through. Have liberty not as the air within a grave Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh, my native, In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate.
Wallace Stevens
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Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.
Wallace Stevens
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Most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it ... if it is true that the style of a poem and the poem itself are one, ... it may be ... that the poets who have little or nothing to say are, or will be, the poets that matter.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.
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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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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We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Wallace Stevens
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The poet is the priest of the invisible.
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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I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.
Wallace Stevens
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True villains are extremely photogenic.
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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In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.
Wallace Stevens
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The wind shifts like this: Like a human without illusions, Who still feels irrational things within her.
Wallace Stevens