Wallace Stevens quotes - page 7

The paramount relation between poetry and painting today, between modern man and modern art, is simply this: that in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost. Men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince. (Wallace Stevens)
Poetry is the subject of the poem, From this the poem issues and To this returns. Between the two, Between issue and return, there is An absence in reality, Things as they are. Or so we say. But are these separate? View quote
Wallace Stevens
First one beam, then another, then A thousand are radiant in the sky. Each is both star and orb; and day Is the riches of their atmosphere. View quote
Wallace Stevens
He tries by a peculiar speech to speak The peculiar potency of the general. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The President ordains the bee to be Immortal. The President ordains. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Yet it depends on yours. The two are one. They are a plural, a right and left, a pair, Two parallels that meet if only in. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Poetry is a search for the inexplicable. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The blue woman, linked and lacquered, at her window Did not desire that feathery argentines Should be cold silver, neither that frothy clouds Should foam, be foamy waves, should move like them. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The thinking of art seems final when The thinking of god is smoky dew. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The President has apples on the table And barefoot servants round him, who adjust The curtains to a metaphysical "t" View quote
Wallace Stevens
My house has changed a little in the sun. The fragrance of the magnolias come close, False flick, false form, but falseness close to kin. (Wallace Stevens)
The soul, he said, is composed Of the external world. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Struggling toward impassioned choirs, Crying among the clouds, enraged By gold antagonists in air - I know my lazy, leaden twang Is like the reason in a storm; And yet it brings the storm to bear. I twang it out and leave it there. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Yet voluble of dumb violence. You look Across the roofs as sigil and as ward And in your centre mark them and are cowed... View quote
Wallace Stevens
Death is the mother of beauty. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Nothing had happened because nothing had changed. Yet the General was rubbish in the end. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The words they spoke were voices that she heard. She looked at them and saw them as they were And what she felt fought off the barest phrase. View quote
Wallace Stevens
Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis, Incipit and a form to speak the word And every latent double in the word, Beau linguist. View quote
Wallace Stevens
A substitute for all the gods: This self, not that gold self aloft, Alone, one's shadow magnified, Lord of the body, looking down, As now and called most high, The shadow of Chocorua In an immenser heaven, aloft, Alone, lord of the land and lord Of the men that live in the land, high lord. One's self and the mountains of one's land, Without shadows, without magnificence, The flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The meeting of their shadows or that meet In a book in a barrack, a letter from Malay. But your war ends. And after it you return. (Wallace Stevens)
These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The monastic man is an artist.The philosopher Appoints man's place in music, say, today. But the priest desires. The philosopher desires. And not to have is the beginning of desire. To have what is not is its ancient cycle. View quote
Wallace Stevens
The world is a force not a presence. View quote
Wallace Stevens
I play. But this is what I think. View quote
Wallace Stevens