Wallace Stevens Quotes

Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

Man is an eternal sophomore.

Day after day, throughout the winter, We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason In a world of wind and frost.

Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.

Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

True villains are extremely photogenic.

The mind is smaller than the eye.

The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

God and the imagination are one.

A change of style is a change of meaning.

All poetry is experimental poetry.

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.

I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

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

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Poetry is a means of redemption.

One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.

The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.

It is the belief and not the god that counts.