Chapter XXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26640/26640-h/26640-h.htm#CHAPTER_XXVIII
The Humbugs of the World (1865)
“You remain the more than natural figure. You
Become the soft-footed phantom, the irrationalDistortion, however fragrant, however dear.
That’s it: the more than rational distortion,
The fiction that results from feeling. Yes, that.”
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
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Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
“First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.”
Ibid.
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man;”
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
Context: It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man; and it is an easier faith that plants and animals may dwindle down into an elemental atom, than that this atom should embrace in its organization, and evolve, all the noble forms of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life.
Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Ten, Games Of Pure Skill And Competitive Computers, p. 337
1999
“I feel more helpless with you than without you.”