Paul Claudel Quotations

All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable.

It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them.

How amazing it is to be alive Anyone who lives and breathes and puts both feet on the ground, What possible reason could he have for envying the gods

The only living socities are those which are animated by inequality and injustice.

The words I use Are everyday words and yet are not the same! You will find no rhymes in my verse, no magic. There are your very own phrases.

You explain nothing, O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable.

The priest has just baptized you a Christian with water; and I baptize you a Frenchman, daring child, with a dewdrop of champagne on your lips.

Art imitates nature not in its effects as such, but in its causes, in its 'manner,' in its process, which are nothing but a participation in and a derivation of actual objects, of the Art of God himself.

While she was working on Maturity, ... M. Rodin is well aware that people have imagined that he did my sculpture why then do all one can to give credence to these lies.

Now I know that at the heart of the universe is joy.

Time: all things consume it, love alone makes use of it.

In a word, poetry can not exist without emotion, or, if you will, without a movement of the soul which regulates the words.

Every birth is a getting to know.

Eighty years old! No eyes left, no ears, no teeth, no legs, no wind! And when all is said and done, how astonishingly well one does without them.

Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage?

Open your eyes! The world is still intact; it is as pristine as it was on the first day, as fresh as milk!

Truth has nothing to do with the number of people it convinces.

We must not seek happiness in peace, but in conflict.

When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.

Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with His Presence.

Intelligence is nothing without delight.

Speak about Christ only when you are asked. But live so that people ask about Christ!