"Imagination is the will of things. . . ."
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Quote collection
Wallace Stevens quotes (page 9 of 14)
274 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion."
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"Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough."
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"It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most. It is older than the oldest speech of Rome. This is the tragic accent of the scene."
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"The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice."
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"All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas."
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"Anything is beautiful if you say it is."
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"Make the visible a little hard to see."
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"The mind is smaller than the eye."
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"To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems."
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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."
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"The reading of a poem should be an experience. Its writing must be all the more so."
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"The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself."
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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."
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"To live in the world but outside of existing conceptions of it."
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"Just as my fingers on these keys make music, so the self-same sounds on my spirit make a music too."
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"The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself."
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"Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly."
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"The sea Severs not only lands but also selves."
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"Poetry increases the feeling for reality."
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