388 Quotes by Wallace Stevens

A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.

Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.

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

To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game; the ideal is to suggest.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world

The winter is made and you have to bear it, The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind, For all the thoughts of summer that go with it In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags....