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It is never the thing but the version of the thing: The fragrance of the woman not her self, Her self in her manner not the solid block, The day in its color not perpending time, Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord, The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.

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
Time
Color
Versions
Lord
Manner
Sound
Block
Words
Weather
Woman
Sounds
Fragrance
Self
Perception
Sovereign
Thing
Poet
Solid
Never
Poetry
Version

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Of what is real I say, Is it the old, the roseate parent or The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else The spirit and all ensigns of the self?
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This mangled, smutted semi-world hacked out Of dirt . . . It is not possible for the moon To blot this with its dove-winged blendings.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
Wallace Stevens
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An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church, but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses.
Wallace Stevens
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The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice.
Wallace Stevens
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One must read poetry with one's nerves.
Wallace Stevens
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One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens
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After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.
Wallace Stevens
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the windy sky Cries out a literate despair.
Wallace Stevens
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Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
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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The muddy rivers of spring Are snarling Under the muddy skies. The mind is muddy.
Wallace Stevens
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The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He wears the words he reads to look upon Within his being.
Wallace Stevens
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Everything is complicated if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace Stevens
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In a world of universal poverty The philosophers alone will be fat Against the autumn winds In an autumn that will be perpetual.
Wallace Stevens
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Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
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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I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.
Wallace Stevens
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The imperfect is our paradise.
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