Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn

I don't love women. Love has to be reinvented, we know that. The only thing women can ultimately imagine is security. Once they get that, love, beauty, everything else goes out the window. All they have left is cold disdain; that's what marriages live on nowadays. Sometimes I see women who ought to be happy, with whom I could have found companionship, already swallowed up by brutes with as much feeling as an old log.

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

On the blue summer evenings, I will go along the paths, And walk over the short grass, as I am pricked by the wheat: Daydreaming I will feel the coolness on my feet. I will let the wind bathe my bare head. I will not speak, I will have no thoughts: But infinite love will mount in my soul; And I will go far, far off, like a gypsy, through the countryside - as happy as if I were a woman. "Sensation

True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.

The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire. He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

...You have to pass an exam, and the jobs that you get are either to shine shoes, or to herd cows, or to tend pigs. Thank God, I don't want any of that! Damn it! And besides that they smack you for a reward; they call you an animal and it's not true, a little kid, etc.. Oh! Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn!

Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.

Je est un autre. (I is someone else).

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.

I may die of earthly love, or of devotion.

The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.

The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.

He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away..." And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.

Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent

Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.

Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? - Through whose blood am I to wade ?

Stronger than alcohol, vaster than poetry, Ferment the freckled red bitterness of love!

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn: From time to time my heart is like some oak Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic. I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

Hay que ser absolutamente Moderno

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.

Your memory and your senses will be nourishment for your creativity.

...as for me, I am intact; and I don't care.

You feel on your lips a kiss Fluttering, a tiny scrap of life.

The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.

I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.

Then you'll feel your cheek scratched... A little kiss, like a crazy spider, Will run round your neck... And you'll say to me : "Find it !" bending your head - And we'll take a long time to find that creature - Which travels a lot.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.

No one's serious at seventeen.

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.

What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.

And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! - But the great Faith is Love!

O seasons, O castles, What soul is without flaws? All its lore is known to me, Felicity, it enchants us all.

Love...no such thing. Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist. Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.