One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility. — Wallace Stevens American literature Copy Share Image
If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself,… — Wallace Stevens Aspirations Copy Share Image
At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
You like it under the trees in autumn, because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves… — Wallace Stevens Autumn Copy Share Image
“We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in cold.” — Wallace Stevens Cold Copy Share Image
A pear should come to the table popped with juice, Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On terms Like these, autumn… — Wallace Stevens Autumn Copy Share Image
Freedom is like a man who kills himself Each night, an incessant butcher, whose knife Grows sharp in blood. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction. — Wallace Stevens Abstraction Copy Share Image
in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination. — Wallace Stevens Consciousness Copy Share Image
Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
Beauty is momentary in the mind The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies;… — Wallace Stevens Beauty Copy Share Image
It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom. — Wallace Stevens Boredom Copy Share Image
Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed. — Wallace Stevens Birth Copy Share Image
Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail. — Wallace Stevens Comparison Copy Share Image
The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy,… — Wallace Stevens Chiefs Copy Share Image
Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. — Wallace Stevens Art Copy Share Image
The mind is the great poem ofwinter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice… — Wallace Stevens Flowers Copy Share Image
The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one's desire Is too difficult to tell from… — Wallace Stevens Desire Copy Share Image
How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. The mortal no Has its emptiness… — Wallace Stevens Cold Copy Share Image
That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your… — Wallace Stevens Animal Copy Share Image
I am one of you and being one of you is being and knowing what I am and know. Yet I am… — Wallace Stevens Angel Copy Share Image
“Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts it becomes an epidemic. p901” — Wallace Stevens Epidemic Copy Share Image
Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve… — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
Tell X that speech is not dirty silence Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier. — Wallace Stevens Communication Copy Share Image
At the piano, scales, arpeggios And chords, the morning exercises, The afternoon's reading, the night's reflection, That's how to produce a virtuoso. — Wallace Stevens Piano Copy Share Image
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 Dirt Copy Share Image
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. — Wallace Stevens Beauty Copy Share Image
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
