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It is the belief and not the god that counts.

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
Counts
Belief

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.
Wallace Stevens
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Fromage and coffee and cognac and no gods.
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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 physical world is meaningless tonight And there is no other.
Wallace Stevens
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We live in an old chaos of the sun.
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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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Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!
Wallace Stevens
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To lose sensibility, to see what one sees, As if sight had not its own miraculous thrift, To hear only what one hears, one meaning alone, As if the paradise of meaning ceased To be paradise, it is this to be destitute.
Wallace Stevens
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I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.
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 mind can never be satisfied.
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.
Wallace Stevens
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True villains are extremely photogenic.
Wallace Stevens
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The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.
Wallace Stevens
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A change of style is a change of meaning.
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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in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction.
Wallace Stevens
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The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself.
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