Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

19 quotes

As an American poet, Wallace Stevens earned a lasting place in the canon of memorable quotations. With equal ease, Wallace Stevens moved between Poetry and Nature, finding connections others missed. Discover 24 of Wallace Stevens's most memorable quotes, ranging across Poetry, Nature, Imagination, Beauty, and Alone. Readers often gravitate to this one: "Money is a kind of poetry."

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

— Wallace Stevens

Beauty

All Quotes by Wallace Stevens

“Money is a kind of poetry.”

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry

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

— Wallace Stevens

Alone

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

— Wallace Stevens

Nature

“In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.”

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”

— Wallace Stevens

Nature

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

— Wallace Stevens

Imagination

“The imagination is man's power over nature.”

— Wallace Stevens

Imagination

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

— Wallace Stevens

Alone

“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

Poetry

“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

Poetry

“Everything is complicated if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry

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

— Wallace Stevens

Nature

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

— Wallace Stevens

Future

“Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.”

— Wallace Stevens

Religion

“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

Imagination

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

— Wallace Stevens

Beauty

“In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.”

— Wallace Stevens

Imagination

“The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.”

— Wallace Stevens

Morning

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

— Wallace Stevens

Poetry