Wallace Stevens Quotes

All experience is subjective.

The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.

The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

People make their own reality. That was what Praxis had taught him years ago. A hundred people can witness the exact same event, and give two hundred and three different accountings of it.

Art is not a reflection of reality, it is the reality of a reflection.

The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.

Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? Are all sevens equal? When the convict ponders the light is it the same light that shines on you?

Perception is a prism, and reality is like shot silk - depends where the light hits.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

We don't live in the world of reality, we live in the world of how we perceive reality.

Our experience of many life circumstances is a function of our personal perspective and not the circumstance itself.

What you see is what you see.

The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

Every question is a hypothetical question for everyone but the person who asks it.

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.

The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor'd through out passions shown; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take.” (p. 318).

We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.

All those statistics that you are gathering about your own experiences and about others are only about how somebody has flowed Energy. It isn't about any hard fast reality.

We bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, something that comes into being through this particular conjunction and no other. And the key to this is the kind of attention we pay to the world.

I never believe I'm presenting objective reality; I also don't want to delude people into thinking that my subject is talking directly to them.