“So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur,
Merely in living as and where we live.”

—  Wallace Stevens

Esthétique du Mal (1944)
Context: One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?
Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,
But the dark italics it could not propound.
And out of what sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur,
Merely in living as and where we live.

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 "So many selves, so many sensuous worlds, As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming With the metaphysical changes t…" by Wallace Stevens?
Wallace Stevens photo
Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955

Related quotes

“We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust.”

Anthony Horowitz book Raven's Gate

Source: Raven's Gate

James Howard Kunstler photo

“I'd been carrying [my Ruger.41 Magnum] so many days that I had almost forgotten it was there. This was the kind of world we now lived in.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 36, p. 171

“Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

The Waking (1953), The Waking

Rick Riordan photo

“And of course I'm in the press all the time. So many books have been written about me; Into thin air, up in the air, Gone with the wind”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

David Attenborough photo

“Those that live in the air have to fight in the air.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

"Meat-Eaters"
The Life of Birds (1998)

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“This one thing remains: faith; one feels instinctively that many things are changing and that everything will change. We are living in the last quarter of a century which will end again in an enormous revolution.... we shall certainly not live to see the better times of pure air and the refreshing of the old society after those big storms. We are still in the closeness but the following generations will be able to breathe in freely.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Antwerp Belgium, Winter 1886; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 451), p. 38
1880s, 1886

John Steinbeck photo

“There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer
Nelson Mandela photo

“We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free.
Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Inaugural celebration address (1994)

Daniel J. Boorstin photo

“The century after the Civil War was to be an Age of Revolution—of countless, little-noticed revolutions, which occurred not in the halls of legislatures or on battlefields or on the barricades but in homes and farms and factories and schools and stores, across the landscape and in the air—so little noticed because they came so swiftly, because they touched Americans everywhere and every day. Not merely the continent but human experience itself, the very meaning of community, of time and space, of present and future, was being revised again and again, a new democratic world was being invented and was being discovered by Americans wherever they lived.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973), as cited in: Robert J. Gordon (2016), The Rise and Fall of American Growth, p. 1.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall photo

“In a world where so many things have changed for the better, there are –sadly - still many vulnerable, forgotten and neglected children. Each one of them has a unique story”

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947) second wife of Prince Charles

During a speech
A speech by Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall 25 February 2014 http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/speeches/speech-her-royal-highness-the-duchess-of-cornwall-dinner-barnardos-clarence-house

Related topics