Quote #118

The major abstraction is the idea of man And major man is its exponent, abler In the abstract than in his singular, More fecund as principle than particle

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. He is and may be but oh! He is, he is, This foundling of the infected past, so bright, So moving in the manner of his hand. Yet look not at…
  2. In being more than an exception, part, Though an heroic part, of the commonal. The major abstraction is the commonal, The inanimate, diffic…
  3. My dame, sing for this person accurate songs.
  4. What chieftain, walking by himself, crying Most miserable, most victorious, Does not see these separate figures one by one, And yet see onl…
  5. Apotheosis is not The origin of the major man. He comes, Compact in invincible foils, from reason, Lighted at midnight by the studious eye,…
  6. It is of him, ephebe, to make, to confect The final elegance, not to console Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound.
  7. The romantic intoning, the declaimed clairvoyance Are parts of apotheosis, appropriate And of its nature, the idiom thereof.
  8. The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.

All Wallace Stevens quotes