Best 96 quotes of Arthur Rimbaud on MyQuotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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!

I may die of earthly love, or of devotion.

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

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.

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

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 shed more tears than God could ever have required.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

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.

Morality is the weakness of the mind.

No one's serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.

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

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.

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

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

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea

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 only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

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

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.