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Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world

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
Inspiration
Men
World
Statement
Statements
Relation
Poetry

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.
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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The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy, we depend Upon it.
Wallace Stevens
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The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.
Wallace Stevens
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Imagination...is the irrepressible revolutionist.
Wallace Stevens
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I have said no To everything, in order to get at myself. I have wiped away moonlight like mud.
Wallace Stevens
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What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
Wallace Stevens
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Unless we believe in the hero, what is there To believe? Incisive what, the fellow Of what good. Devise. Make him of mud.
Wallace Stevens
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We live in an old chaos of the sun.
Wallace Stevens
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It is never the thing but the version of the thing.
Wallace Stevens
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Beneath every no lays a passion for yes that had never been broken.
Wallace Stevens
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In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.
Wallace Stevens
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I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.
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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I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.
Wallace Stevens
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My tribute to mystical, magical trees that the Cherokee called standing people. . . .
Wallace Stevens
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Life is the elimination of what is dead.
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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Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.
Wallace Stevens
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The figures of the past go cloaked. They walk in mist and rain and snow And go, go slowly, but they go.
Wallace Stevens