Quotes By Wallace Stevens

The genuine artist is never "true to life." He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.

The imagination is man's power over nature.

As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

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

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.

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.

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.

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

One's ignorance is one's chief asset.

After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.

It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.