Wallace Stevens Quotations

Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.

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

In a world of universal poverty The philosophers alone will be fat Against the autumn winds In an autumn that will be perpetual.

Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

What is there in life except one's ideas, Good air, good friend, what is there in life?

It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most. It is older than the oldest speech of Rome. This is the tragic accent of the scene.

The mind is smaller than the eye.

The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice....

The muddy rivers of spring Are snarling Under the muddy skies. The mind is muddy.

The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy, we depend Upon it.