"The first idea is an imagined thing."

Wallace Stevens Business See all quotes by Wallace Stevens →

React to this quote

More by Wallace Stevens

“The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.”

“The paramount relation between poetry and painting today, between modern man and modern art, is simply this: that in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost. Men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince.”

“To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.”

“If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.”

“We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.”

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

Resonant Thoughts

"I think it's important just to distinguish between Islamism and Islam, a religion. What I mean by Islamism is the desire to impose any version of islam over society. Although ideology was sold to me a…"

— Maajid Nawaz

Literature1977

#leadership

"Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway — security again…"

— E. B. White

Literature1899–1985

#love

"On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be pai…"

— Amy Tan

Literature1952

#time

"I want to write music. I want to sit down right now at the piano, and write a song that people will listen to and remember. And do the same thing every morning for the rest of my life."

— Jonathan Larson

Music1960–1996

#music