Quote

If ever the search for a tranquil belief should end, The future might stop emerging out of the past, Out of what is full of us yet the search And the future emerging out of us seem to be one.

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
Seems
Search
Ever
Seem
Might
Full
Stop
Belief
Future
Ends
Tranquil
Past
Emerging

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Next to love is the desire for love.
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At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
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Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
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After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
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The imperfect is our paradise.
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Realism is a corruption of reality.
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Revolution Is the affair of logical lunatics.
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Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.
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I am the angel of Reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.
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One must read poetry with one's nerves.
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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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I do not know which to prefer - The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
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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.
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Soldier, there is a war between the mind And sky, between thought and day and night. It is For that the poet is always in the sun, Patches the moon together in his room To his Virgilian cadences, up down, Up down. It is a war that never ends.
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Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
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Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
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The poet is the priest of the invisible.
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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.
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The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us, Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
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Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
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