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Wallace Stevens Quotes

1879–1955 United States

Wallace Stevens (2 October 1879 – 2 August 1955) was an American modernist poet and businessman.

United States
Businesspeople
Lawyers
Poets

Also known as: Stevens, Wallace

Random Wallace Stevens quote

230 quotes

The fluctuations of certainty, the change
Of degrees of perception in the scholar’s dark.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

And still the grossest iridescence of ocean
Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips
Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

The poem goes form the poet’s gibberish to
The gibberish of the vulgate and back again.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

Each must the other take as sign, short sign
To stop the whirlwind, balk the elements.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

Behold
The approach of him whom none believes,
Whom all believe that all believe,
A pagan in a varnished car.

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Music falls on the silence like a sense,
A passion that we feel, not understand.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

It is of him, ephebe, to make, to confect
The final elegance, not to console
Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

It is the celestial ennui of apartments
That sends us back to the first idea.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

He tries by a peculiar speech to speak
The peculiar potency of the general.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

Parts of a World (1942)

The right, uplifted foreleg of the horse
Suggested that, at the final funeral,
The music halted and the horse stood still.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

In solitude the trumpets of solitude
Are not of another solitude resounding;
A little string speaks for a crowd of voices.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Harmonium (1923)

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Opus Posthumous (1957)

The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets
Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves
Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942)

To get at the thing
Without gestures is to get at it as
Idea.

Transport to Summer (1947)

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

Opus Posthumous (1957)

One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough.

Parts of a World (1942)

This is old song
That will not declare itself.

Harmonium (1923)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Wallace Stevens (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.