“Be content —
Expansions, diffusions — content to be
The unspotted imbecile revery,
The heraldic center of the world
Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins,
The amorist Adjective aflame…”

— Wallace Stevens

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

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 "Be content — Expansions, diffusions — content to be The unspotted imbecile revery, The heraldic center of the world …" by Wallace Stevens?

Wallace Stevens photo

Wallace Stevens278

American poet 1879–1955

Related quotes

“The world is blue.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 182
from posthumous publications

“I am the blues
I am the blues
The whole world knows
I've been mistreated and misused.”

Willie Dixon (1915–1992) American blues musician

"I Am The Blues" (Hoochie Coochie Music/Arc Music, 1969), reported in I am the Blues: the Willie Dixon Story‎ (with Don Snowden, 1990), p. 1.

“I exhaust myself terribly to content the world, and never manage to content myself.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin's note, c. 1890; as cited in G. Jean-Aubry & Robert Schmit, Eugène Boudin, Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1968, p. 115
1880s - 1890s

“.. the flag is green with a red spot in the center; above, the blue of the sky, the orange-tinted white of the walls, and the orange-grey of the clouds.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

short notation, 1881: from 'Notes inedites de Seurat sur Delacroix', in 'Bulletin de la Vie Artistique', April 1922; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 6 - note 9 <br class="br">Seurat studied carefully the paintings of Eugene Delacroix, and wrote in 1881 about Delacroix's painting 'The Fanatics of Tangier' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_The_Fanatics_of_Tangier_-_WGA06195.jpg this notation <br class="br">Quotes, 1881 - 1890

“While the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 53

“According to Biblical history and all of the history of the world, the blues was built in man from the beginning. The first thing that came out of man is the blues because, according to the Scriptures, when God made man, man was lonesome and blue.”

Willie Dixon (1915–1992) American blues musician

I am the Blues: the Willie Dixon Story‎ (with Don Snowden, 1990), p. 2.

“This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)

“I had left the visible, physical blue at the door, outside, in the street. The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space, the blue of my kingdom, of our kingdom!... the immaterialisation of blue, the coloured space that can not be seen but which we impregnate ourselves with... A space of blue sensibility within the frame of the white walls of the gallery.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 41
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“The world is content with setting right the surface of things.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Discourse VIII, pt. 8.
The Idea of a University (1873)

“My son Robert, the scientist, told me at dinner that blue is not blue. That what we call blue is actually something that absorbs all other energy frequencies and rejects blue. Our eyes see the frequencies cast off as blue and we call it blue. I wondered, are we defined by the things we are, or the things we reject?”

Stephen Tobolowsky (1951) actor and writer

Stephen Tobolowsky in a Facebook post on July 3, 2014 https://www.facebook.com/stephentobolowsky/posts/897200563629843.

Related topics