Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
Wallace StevensRead
In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the transient nature of happiness and the complexities of self-identity within the context of beauty and imperfection.
In this quote, Wallace Stevens explores the nuanced experience of happiness that arises in fleeting moments of beauty during spring. He emphasizes the idea that our identities and feelings are often elusive, shaped by the surroundings that can only be vaguely articulated, suggesting that true contentment can exist in accepting oneself amidst life's incompleteness.
Themes
HappinessSelf-IdentityBeautyImperfectionTransience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a reflective essay about the nature of happiness.
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
We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
George R. R. MartinRead
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
It's a difficult competition against silence, because silence is a perfect language, the only language which says with no words.
Eduardo GaleanoRead
You won't discover the limits of the soul, however far you go.
HeraclitusRead
A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith.
Pope Leo IRead
Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Virginia WoolfRead