The law of chaos is the law of ideas, Of improvisations and seasons of belief. Ideas are men. The mass of meaning and The mass of men are one. Chaos is not The mass of meaning. It is three or four Ideas, or, say, five men or, possibly, six. In the end, these philosophic assassins pull Revolvers and shoot each other. One remains. The mass of meaning becomes composed again.

— Wallace Stevens

The mind can never be satisfied.

— 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 Plot Against The Giant First Girl When this yokel comes maundering, Whetting his hacker, I shall run before him, Diffusing the civilest odors Out of geraniums and unshelled flowers. It will check him. Second Girl shall run before him, Arching cloths be sprinkled with colors As small as fish-eggs. The threads Will abash him. Third Girl Oh, la...LE pure! I shall run before him, With a curious puffing. He will bend his ear then. I shall whisper Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals. It will undo him.

— Wallace Stevens

The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully.

— Wallace Stevens

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATEIClear water in a brilliant bowl, Pink and white carnations. The lighting the room more like a snowy air, Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow At the end of winter when afternoons return. Pink and white carnations - one desires So much more than that. The day itself Is simplified: a bowl of white, Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, With nothing more than the carnations there.II Say even that this complete simplicity Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed The evilly compounded, vital And made it fresh in a world of white, A world of clear water, brilliant-edged, Still one would want more, one would need more, More than a world of white and snowy scents.III There would still remain the never-resting mind, So that one would want to escape, come back To what had been so long composed. The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us, Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

— Wallace Stevens

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactness Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.

— Wallace Stevens

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

— Wallace Stevens

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things

— Wallace Stevens