One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.
Wallace Stevens

One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
Wallace Stevens

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
Wallace Stevens

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
Wallace Stevens

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!
Wallace Stevens

Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
Wallace Stevens

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
Wallace Stevens

The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.
Wallace Stevens

The fire burns as the novel taught it how.
Wallace Stevens

The genuine artist is never "true to life." He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.
Wallace Stevens

The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
Wallace Stevens

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Wallace Stevens

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens

The poet is the priest of the invisible.
Wallace Stevens

The point of vision and desire are the same.
Wallace Stevens

The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.
Wallace Stevens

The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
Wallace Stevens

Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
Wallace Stevens