388 Quotes by Wallace Stevens

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things

Poetry is a satisfying of the desire for resemblance. As the mere satisfying of a desire, it is pleasurable. But poetry if it did nothing but satisfy a desire would not rise above the level of many lesser things. Its singularity is that in the act of satisfying the desire for resemblance it touches the sense of reality, it enhances the sense of reality, heightens it, intensifies it.

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

Perhaps,The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,But he that of repetition is most master.

Consider the odd morphology of regret.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

The mind can never be satisfied.

The truth is that there comes a time When we can mourn no more over music That is so much motionless sound

For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds /Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.