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!

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.

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

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.