"Poems by Stevens at PoetryFoundation.org"

“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.”