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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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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Human
Humans
Contend
Terrific
Survived
Literature
Spirit
Ever

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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The wind, Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, Came bluntly thundering, more terrible Than the revenge of music on bassoons.
Wallace Stevens
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It was autumn and falling stars Covered the shrivelled forms Crouched in the moonlight.
Wallace Stevens
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A languid janitor bears His lantern through colonnades And the architecture swoons.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.
Wallace Stevens
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Thus the theory of description matters most. It is the theory of the word for those For whom the word is the making of the world, The buzzing world and lisping firmament.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have.
Wallace Stevens
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Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds on my spirit make a music too.
Wallace Stevens
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Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
Wallace Stevens
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I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.
Wallace Stevens
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If the hero is not a person, the emblem Of him, even if Xenophon, seems To stand taller than a person stands, has A wider brow, large and less human Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body Of a primitive.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens
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The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
Wallace Stevens
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Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.
Wallace Stevens
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A pear should come to the table popped with juice, Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On terms Like these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
Wallace Stevens
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That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.
Wallace Stevens
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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.
Wallace Stevens
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The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.
Wallace Stevens
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People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow & they would if poets wrote it.
Wallace Stevens