“A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.”

—  Wallace Stevens

Journal entry (26 July 1899); as published in Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens (1977) edited by Holly Stevens, Ch. 3

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light." by Wallace Stevens?
Wallace Stevens photo
Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955

Related quotes

Christine de Pizan photo

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Source: Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

James Russell Lowell photo

“No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

A Glance Behind the Curtain (1843)

“The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot

Frederick William Robertson photo

“Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man — a noble man — frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.

Khalil Gibran photo

“Master, Master of Light,
Whose eye dwells in the seeking fingers of the blind,
You are still despised and mocked,
A man too weak and infirm to be God,
A God too much man to call forth adoration.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

Aristophanés photo

“Chorus [leader]: Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span, / Protracted with sorrow from day to day, / Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, / Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!”

Aristophanés The Birds

heavily rewritten tr. Frere 1839, p. 38 http://books.google.com/books?id=Bk8JAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Sickly%2C+calamitous+creatures+of+clay%22
Birds (414 BC)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“"I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside." This remark of a mental patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works on introspection.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

“It was not enough that India should get Swaraj. It was more important in whose hands the Swaraj would be.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

“It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

Related topics