Arthur Rimbaud Quotations

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

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

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

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

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.

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

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

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

I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.

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

one single true word: it is, COME BACK. I want to be with you, I love you. If you listen to this you will prove your courage and sincerity. Otherwise, I am sorry for you. But I love you. I kiss you and we'll see eachother again...

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn

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

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

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.

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....

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

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

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.

I may die of earthly love, or of devotion.

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.

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

...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!

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.

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

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

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

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

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

What am I doing here?

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

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.

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

I wrote silences; nights; I recorded the unnameable.

And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.

It was the voice of mad seas, roaring immense,/ That shattered your infant breast, too soft, too human.

I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.

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

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...

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

To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies shall I uphold? In what blood tread?

But the problem is to make the soul into a monster

Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea

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

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

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

Faith assuages, guides, restores.

I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

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.

...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.

-But I've just noticed that my mind is asleep.

My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?

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.

. . . be absolute moderne.

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.

I shed more tears than God could ever have required.

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

What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!

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

No one's serious at seventeen.

Unhappiness was my god.

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

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.

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

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.

...I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it’s not its fault. That’s obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage. If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!

All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.

A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn't he?

Misfortune was my god.

There shall be poets! When woman's unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man--hitherto detestable--having let her go, she, too, will be poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her ideational worlds be different from ours? She will come upon strange, unfathomable, repellent, delightful things; we shall take them, we shall comprehend them.

I could never throw Love out of the window.

I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.

Here I am on the shore of Brittany. Let the cities light up in the evening. My day is done. I am leaving Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs. Lost climates will tan me. I will swim, trample the grass, hung, and smoke especially. I will drink alcohol as strong as boiling metal--just as my dear ancestors did around their fires.

Morality is the weakness of the mind.

I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.

One evening I sat Beauty on my knees – And I found her bitter – And I reviled her.

And from then on, I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, star-infused, and opalescent, devouring green azures

Oh! If only we were naked now, and free to watch our protruding parts align; To whisper - both of us - in ecstasy!

It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Eternity is the sun mixed with the sea

You will always be a hyena.

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

As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.

True life is elsewhere

In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.

O witches, O misery, O hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted! I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the strength of a wild beast. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand, misfortune was my God.

In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.

The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!

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