Wallace Stevens Quotes
One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be. One's ignorance is one's chief asset. Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them. Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise! Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into. Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress. 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. The fire burns as the novel taught it how. 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. The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence. The poet is the priest of the invisible. The point of vision and desire are the same. The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire. The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it. Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
Web Toolbar by Wibiya 