Wallace Stevens Quotes

I am the angel of reality, Seen for a moment standing in the door.

Esthétique du Mal (1944)

One might have thought of sight, but who could think Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees? Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound, But the dark italics it could not propound. And out of what sees and hears and out Of what one feels, who could have thought to make So many selves, so many sensuous worlds, As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming With the metaphysical changes that occur, Merely in living as and where we live.

If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.

Let wise men piece the world together with wisdom Or poets with holy magic. Hey-di-ho.

This will make widows wince. But fictive things Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.

Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

To be young is all there is in the world. The rest is nonsense — and cant. They talk so beautifully about work and having a family and a home (and I do, too, sometimes) — but it’s all worry and head-aches and respectable poverty and forced gushing.... Telling people how nice it is, when, in reality, you would give all of your last thirty years for one of your first thirty. Old people are tremendous frauds.

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.

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.

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.