Wallace Stevens
Poet
1879-10-02
Quotes by Wallace Stevens
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It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.
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The mind can never be satisfied.
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The truth is that there comes a time When we can mourn no more over music That is so much motionless sound
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I know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involvedIn what I know.
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All history is modern history.
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Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.
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Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.
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There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.
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Poetry is the scholar's art.
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Let be be finale of seem.The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
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The Plot Against The GiantFirst GirlWhen this yokel comes maundering,Whetting his hacker,I shall run before him,Diffusing the civilest odorsOut of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.It will check him.Second GirlI shall run before him,Arching cloths besprinkled with colorsAs small as fish-eggs.The threadsWill abash him.Third GirlOh, la...le pauvre!I shall run before him,With a curious puffing.He will bend his ear then.I shall whisperHeavenly labials in a world of gutturals.It will undo him.
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I placed a jar in Tennessee and round it was upon a hill.
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The exceeding brightness of this early sunMakes me conceive how dark I have become.
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A pear should come to the table popped with juice,Ripened in warmth and served in warmth. On termsLike these, autumn beguiles the fatalist.
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The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
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The Poem That Took The Place Of A MountainThere it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactness Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.
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Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
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Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.
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One must read poetry with one's nerves.
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After the leaves have fallen, we returnTo a plain sense of things. It is as ifWe had come to an end of the imagination,Inanimate in an inert savoir.
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