Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the internal experiences and emotions inherent in the human soul and the connection between nature and our feelings.
Wallace Stevens' quote emphasizes the idea that true divinity and depth of experience must arise from within oneself. It suggests that a person's inner life is shaped by their emotions, experiences, and their interaction with the natural world around them. The imagery of rain, snow, loneliness, and joy captures the complexity of human emotion, illustrating that both pleasure and pain are essential to the richness of the soul's journey. Thus, our personal experiences and emotions are not just external influences, but integral measures of our inner essence.
Themes
DivinityEmotionsNatureExperienceSoulComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
Sharing this quote at a poetry reading to highlight the connection between nature and human emotions.
More from Wallace Stevens
All quotes →Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
Wallace StevensRead
After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Wallace StevensRead
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Wallace StevensRead
LIGHT FROM WITHIN my friend, cancer got you damn it: you had it beat for seven years at least. how did it come back? Why all that pain. again. and you, such a fighter you fought me over and over with tears and words and promises. you fought for me with honesty and a light so bright it hurts my heart. sweet lorna. at peace now finally no more battles, just light from within a flickering candle in the dark burns with you.
Wallace StevensRead
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
Wallace StevensRead
Similar quotes
Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.
Margaret AtwoodRead
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
Kurt VonnegutRead
To be free . . . to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life--that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.
Paul RobesonRead
People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.
Susan SontagRead
Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.
Arundhati RoyRead
There is no virtue higher than non-injury.
Swami VivekanandaRead