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

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
Remains
Existence
Whatever
Words
Real
World
Nourish
Defend

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Disillusion is the last illusion.
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Everything is complicated if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
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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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It was autumn and falling stars Covered the shrivelled forms Crouched in the moonlight.
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Poetry increases the feeling for reality.
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The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
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If the hero is not a person, the emblem Of him, even if Xenophon, seems To stand taller than a person stands, has A wider brow, large and less human Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body Of a primitive.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.
Wallace Stevens
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The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate.
Wallace Stevens
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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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The heavy trees, The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust, The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths.
Wallace Stevens
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The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.
Wallace Stevens
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At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
Wallace Stevens
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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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Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
Wallace Stevens
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Words of the world are the life of the world.
Wallace Stevens
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The prologues are over. It is a question, now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.
Wallace Stevens
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Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.
Wallace Stevens
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There's no such thing as life or if there is, It is faster than the weather, faster than Any character. It is more than any scene: Of the guillotine or of any glamorous hanging.
Wallace Stevens
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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