Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Disrespect for others' art is worse than disrespect for their religion.
Wallace Stevens highlights the severity of intolerance towards artistic expressions compared to religious beliefs. While both are forms of personal truth and identity, undermining someone's art reveals a deeper form of intolerance, as art often reflects the essence of human experience and emotional depth, making it arguably more fundamental to individual expression and culture.
Themes
IntoleranceArtReligionExpressionCulture
In practice
Example use cases
During an art critique session, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of respecting diverse artistic perspectives.
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.
Wallace StevensRead
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?
Wallace StevensRead
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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I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh.
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But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by 'identify,' I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.
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Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.
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How many shows on TV do you see young black people, both women and men, really embody a full-fledged human being, flaws and all?
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You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
Steven PressfieldRead