More - Wallace Stevens Quotes

After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.

Wallace Stevens

 American Poet

Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.

Wallace Stevens

 

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

Wallace Stevens

 American Poet

Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.

Wallace Stevens

 American Poet

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Wallace Stevens

 American Poet

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman

Wallace Stevens

 

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

Wallace Stevens

 American Poet

Beauty is momentary in the mind / The fitful tracing of a portal; / But in the flesh it is immortal. / The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

Wallace Stevens

 Beauty

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after

Wallace Stevens

 Beauty

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

 American Poet