Quote

On a few words of what is real in the world I nourish myself. I defend myself against Whatever remains.

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
Real
World
Nourish
Defend
Remains
Existence
Whatever
Words

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

Image
We have been a little insane about the truth. We have had an obsession.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
Wallace Stevens
Image
What is there in life except one's ideas, Good air, good friend, what is there in life?
Wallace Stevens
Image
It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.
Wallace Stevens
Image
How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?
Wallace Stevens
Image
The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He wears the words he reads to look upon Within his being.
Wallace Stevens
Image
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.
Wallace Stevens
Image
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.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Poetry is a means of redemption.
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
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
Image
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
Image
Tinsel in February, tinsel in August. There are things in a man besides his reason.
Wallace Stevens
Image
All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Fromage and coffee and cognac and no gods.
Wallace Stevens
Image
Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.
Wallace Stevens
Image
The grackles sing avant the spring Most spiss oh! Yes, most spissantly. They sing right puissantly.
Wallace Stevens