Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers. Wallace Stevens More Quotes by Wallace Stevens More Quotes From Wallace Stevens Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility. Wallace Stevens inappropriatesourceliterature Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. Wallace Stevens fruitgone The fire burns as the novel taught it how. Wallace Stevens taughtnovelfire New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors. Wallace Stevens walking-awaystupidnew-york What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality. Wallace Stevens eyemeditationreality If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution. Wallace Stevens rivalsaddressesneeds 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. Wallace Stevens politicalsexpeople 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 echoesboyspeople The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin. Wallace Stevens orangeskinsyellow Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point. Wallace Stevens dustflowerrain It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time. Wallace Stevens speechtimemen Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice Wallace Stevens orangesacrificecoffee There is not any haunt of prophecy, Wallace Stevens junehomespring 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 autumnwisefall In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be. Wallace Stevens mooncloudsspring Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood. Wallace Stevens easterreligiousgod It is easy to suppose that few people realize on that occasion, which comes to all of us, when we look at the blue sky for the first time, that is to say: not merely see it, but look at it and experience it and for the first time have a sense that we live in the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there - few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings. Wallace Stevens skybluepeople I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. Wallace Stevens rhythmaccentsnoble The mind can never be satisfied. Wallace Stevens satisfiedmind To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind. Wallace Stevens imaginationlifethinking
