Quotations From WALLACE STEVENS

» More about Wallace Stevens on Poemhunter

• 1.

  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 (1879-1955), U.S. poet. (Originally published 1951). Opus Posthumous, "Two or Three Ideas," (1959).
  
  Read more quotations about / on: poem, nature, god
• 2.

  Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Indian River."
  
  Read more quotations about / on: spring
• 3.

  Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Opus Posthumous, "Adagia," (1959).
  
  Read more quotations about / on: evil, life
• 4.

  New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests—undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else—a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens, ch. 4, entry for June 15, 1900, ed. Holly Stevens (1977).
• 5.

  How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Adagia," Opus Posthumous (1959).
• 6.

  Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. letter, Dec. 19, 1935. Letters of Wallace Stevens, no. 336, ed. Holly Stevens (1967).
  
  Read more quotations about / on: poetry, life
• 7.

  Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Lecture first published (1942). "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words," The Necessary Angel (1951).
  
  Read more quotations about / on: torn, woman
• 8.

  All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words," The Necessary Angel (1942, repr. 1951).
• 9.

  The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

  Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. (Originally published 1944). "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet," lecture, Aug. 1943, The Necessary Angel (1951).
• 10.

  The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind, If one may say so.

  Wallace Stevens 1879-1955, U.S. poet. "Connoisseur of Chaos," Parts of a World (1942).