Arthur Rimbaud
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Happiness
Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.
I is another.
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.
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.
Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!
Morality is the weakness of the brain.
Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.
I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.
Misfortune was my god.
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.Collection: Forever
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.Collection: Inspirational
A thousand Dreams within me softly burnCollection: Dream
The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.Collection: Unbearable
True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Love
Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.Collection: Sea
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.Collection: Running
I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.Collection: Sky
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. "SensationCollection: Summer
Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Strong
Your memory and your senses will be nourishment for your creativity.Collection: Memories
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 thoughtCollection: Animal
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.Collection: Couple
I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silentCollection: Knowing
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.Collection: Life
The northern lights rise like a kiss to the seaCollection: Kissing
You feel on your lips a kiss Fluttering, a tiny scrap of life.Collection: Kissing
I could never throw Love out of the window.Collection: Window
What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?Collection: Nothingness
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.Collection: Fear
What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!Collection: Maids
I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.Collection: Soul
-But I've just noticed that my mind is asleep.Collection: Mind
. . . be absolute moderne.Collection: Absolutes
And from then on, I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, star-infused, and opalescent, devouring green azuresCollection: Stars
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.Collection: Brother
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.Collection: Blue
Unhappiness was my god.Collection: Unhappiness
As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.Collection: Rivers
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Strong
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than poetry, Ferment the freckled red bitterness of love!Collection: Alcohol
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?Collection: Sleep
You will always be a hyena.Collection: Hyenas