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!

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

True life is elsewhere

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

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

You will always be a hyena.

Eternity is the sun mixed with the sea

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

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

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

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

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

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

Morality is the weakness of the mind.

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.

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.

I could never throw Love out of the window.

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.

Misfortune was my god.

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

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.

...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!

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.

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

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.

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

Unhappiness was my god.

No one's serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

I shed more tears than God could ever have required.

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.

. . . be absolute moderne.

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

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

Faith assuages, guides, restores.

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!

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

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea

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

But the problem is to make the soul into a monster

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?

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

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...

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

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

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

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.

I wrote silences; nights; I recorded the unnameable.

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

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.

Hay que ser absolutamente Moderno

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.

What am I doing here?

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

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

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

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

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.

...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!

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

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.

I may die of earthly love, or of devotion.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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...

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!