Quote

Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

Wallace Stevens

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Comparison
Details
Imagination
Whole
World
Vapid
Detail
Applied

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

Image
Beneath every no lays a passion for yes that had never been broken.
Wallace Stevens
Image
I do not know which to prefer - The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.
Wallace Stevens
Image
On a few words of what is real in the world I nourish myself. I defend myself against Whatever remains.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Poetry is a means of redemption.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Imagination is the will of things. . . .
Wallace Stevens
Image
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Wallace Stevens
Image
Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.
Wallace Stevens
Image
A change of style is a change of meaning.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace Stevens
Image
It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
Wallace Stevens
Image
We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Music falls on the silence like a sense / A passion that we feel, not understand.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The imperfect is our paradise.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.
Wallace Stevens
Image
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
Image
The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.
Wallace Stevens