Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

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?

Eternity is the sun mixed with the sea

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

I shed more tears than God could ever have required.

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

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

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

I could never throw Love out of the window.

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

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

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

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

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

Faith assuages, guides, restores.

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

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

. . . be absolute moderne.

Unhappiness was my god.

Misfortune was my god.

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

Faith assuages guides restores.

Blood was flowing – in Bluebeard’s house, in the abattoirs, in the circuses where God had set his seal to whiten the windows. Blood and Milk flowed together.

No one's serious at seventeen, When lindens line the promenades

Never admit defeat!

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:From time to time my heart is like some oakWhose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

They find me odd, and whisper behind hands…And my brutal desires sink hooks into their lips…

The same bourgeois magic everywhere the mail train sets you down.

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.

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

À l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.

In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.

L'aube exalteé ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, et j'ai vu quelquefois ce que l'homme a cru voir!(And dawn, exalted like a host of doves - and then I've seen what men believe they've seen!)