Wallace Stevens Quotes

We say God and the imagination are one… How high that highest candle lights the dark.

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.

It may be that the ignorant man, alone, has any chance to mate his life with life.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream: Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is […]

All history is modern history.

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

Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires.

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.