Miscellaneous quotation

"Every body, every quality of a body, resolves itself into an enormous number of vibrations, movements, changes. . . . Philosophy has long dismissed the notion of substance and modern physics had endorsed the dismissal. . . . How then does the world come to appear to us as a collection of solid, static objects extended in space? Because of the intellect, which presents us with a false view of it."
--Dr. Joad, quoted by Wallace Stevens in "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

Wallace Stevens, "The Motive for Metaphor"

You like it under the trees in autumn,

Because everything is half dead.

The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves

And repeats words without meaning.

In the same way, you were happy in spring,

With the half colors of quarter-things,

The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,

The single bird, the obscure moon—

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world

Of things that would never be quite expressed,

Where you yourself were never quite yourself

And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:

The motive for metaphor, shrinking from

The weight of primary noon,

The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer

Of red and blue, the hard sound—

Steel against intimation—the sharp flash,

The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.

--Wallace Stevens, "The Motive for Metaphor"