Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
It is never the thing but the version of the thing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our perception shapes our understanding of reality, not the reality itself.
This quote by Wallace Stevens suggests that the way we interpret or perceive things is more important than the actual things themselves. It emphasizes the subjective nature of reality, indicating that our individual perspectives define our experiences and truths, rather than an objective world that exists independently of our interpretations.
Themes
PerceptionRealitySubjectivityInterpretation
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion about the nature of reality, this quote can illustrate how different perspectives shape our understanding.
More from Wallace Stevens
All quotes βMost modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
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After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
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Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
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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
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The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
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We should know that faith is a gift of God, and that it may not be given to men, except it be graciously. Thus, indeed, all the good which we have is of God; and accordingly, when God rewardeth a good work of man, he crowneth his own gift.
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The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
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God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
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What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
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