Wallace Stevens

One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;