Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is complex and confusing, yet love, art, and nature bring value amid this confusion.
Wallace Stevens expresses the bewilderment of the human experience, highlighting that while life can be confounding, there are elements like love, art, and nature that are inherently beautiful and meaningful. He suggests that our attempts to understand and articulate our experiences may seem trivial compared to the vastness of life's mysteries, drawing a parallel between historical contexts and contemporary observations.
Themes
LifeLoveArtNatureConfusionUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the complexity of the human condition.
More from Wallace Stevens
All quotes →Most 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
Similar quotes
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
Carl JungRead
We know that the body needs bread, therefore we seek for bread for it: so must we seek for the food of the soul.
Lancelot AndrewesRead
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
America was founded by people who believe that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we're on His side.
Ronald ReaganRead
There's something scary about stupidity made coherent.
Tom StoppardRead
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Lord ActonRead