Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Stevens values aesthetic pleasure and beauty in his philosophical outlook more than strict utility or harsh truth.
In plain terms
He prefers his thoughts to be beautiful rather than purely functional.
What can you take from it?
Prioritize beauty in your worldview.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • personal philosophy
  • lifestyle choices

Putting it to work

  • choose beautiful environments
  • value art in science

Questions to consider

  • What does beauty add to your understanding of truth?
  • Can a philosophy be valid without beauty?

Another view

Focusing too much on beauty might obscure necessary harsh truths.

More from Wallace Stevens

  1. Success as a result of industry is a peasant ideal.

    Permalink to quote #18
  2. Poetry is an effort of a dissatisfied man to find satisfaction through words.

    Permalink to quote #20
  3. Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the be…

    Permalink to quote #17

Related quotes

  1. Too fair to worship, too divine to love.

    Henry Hart MilmanHenry Hart Milman quote #2
  2. As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

    Annie DillardAnnie Dillard quote #2
  3. To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before.…

    Edith HamiltonEdith Hamilton quote #9