388 Quotes by Wallace Stevens

From the opening lines of the play Three Travelers Watch a SunriseAll you need,To find poetry,Is to look for it with a lantern.

If there must be a god in the house, must be,Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghostOr Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang outHis stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

The death of one god is the death of all.

The soul, o ganders, flies beyond the parksAnd far beyond the discords of the wind.A bronze rain from the sun descending marksThe death of summer, which that time endures

Children picking up our bonesWill never know that these were onceAs quick as foxes on the hill;

A change of style is a change of meaning.

From oriole to crow, note the declineIn music. Crow is realist. But, then,Oriole, also, may be realist.

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

Poetry is a finikin thing of airThat lives uncertainly and not for longYet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.