Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.

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

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

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

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.

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.

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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