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.
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?
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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
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Words can bring you only up to their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only.
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The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.
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The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
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I believe in the sun. In the tangle of human failures of fear, greed and forgetfulness, the sun gives me clarity.
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