Quote

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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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Constant
Violets
Objects
Inconstancy
Cause
Violet
Causes
Dove
Universe
Bees
Girl
Thus
Inconstant
Change
Changes
Hyacinths
Girls
Doves

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Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
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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.
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Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
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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.
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Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.
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Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.
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Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
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We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.
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We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark.
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Freedom is like a man who kills himself Each night, an incessant butcher, whose knife Grows sharp in blood.
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The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.
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One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.
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The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.
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There may be always a time of innocence. There is never a place.
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Imagination...is the irrepressible revolutionist.
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One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
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Perhaps there is a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagines are one: a state of clairvoyant observation, accessible or possibly accessible to the poet or, say, the acutest poet.
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I am one of you and being one of you is being and knowing what I am and know. Yet I am the necessary Angel of earth, since, in my sight, you see the earth again.
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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.
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Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
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