Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.
Interpretation
Order and disorder are interconnected concepts that can represent the same underlying truth.
This quote by Wallace Stevens explores the paradoxical relationship between order and disorder. It suggests that what we perceive as violent or chaotic can actually embody a hidden form of order, while what we define as orderly may mask underlying disorder. This notion encourages a deeper reflection on the complexity and duality of existence, inviting us to recognize that opposites often coexist and inform each other.
In practice
In a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.
Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
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.
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.
I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability β the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.
I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know - that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction.
The need is not to amputate the ego ... but to transcend it.
Mostly, I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.
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