388 Quotes by Wallace Stevens

I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.

At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.

The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.

The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.

So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio--remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales--we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.