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Exile desire
For what is not. This is the barrenness
Of the fertile thing that can attain no more.

— Wallace Stevens Collected Poems (1954)

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More quotes by Wallace Stevens

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

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.

Harmonium (1923)

One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

To be young is all there is in the world.

A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

Harmonium (1923)

All Wallace Stevens quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wallace Stevens (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.