Arthur Rimbaud
Poet
1854-10-20 – 1891-11-10
French poet whose innovative and intensely lyrical work transformed modern poetry while he was still a teenager. He is best known for A Season in Hell and Illuminations. Though his literary career was brief, his influence on Symbolist and modernist writing has been profound.
Quotes by Arthur Rimbaud
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Weakness or strength: there you are, strength. You do not know where you are going, nor why you are going; enter anywhere, reply to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse.— In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke in the sky; to the right, to the left all the riches of the world flaming like a billion thunder-bolts.
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Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drank of the untaxed liquor of Satan's still.
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In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
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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
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But the problem is to make the soul into a monster
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In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.
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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.
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True alchemy lies in this formula: —Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'.
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I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
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O seasons, O castles,What soul is without flaws?All its lore is known to me,Felicity, it enchants us all.
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Morality is the weakness of the mind.
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Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
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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.
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I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Read quote -
But the problem is to make the soul into a monster
Read quote -
Morality is the weakness of the mind.
Read quote -
True alchemy lies in this formula: —Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'.
Read quote -
Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
Read quote -
Weakness or strength: there you are, strength. You do not know where you are going, nor why you are going; enter anywhere, reply to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse.— In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke in the sky; to the right, to the left all the riches of the world flaming like a billion thunder-bolts.
Read quote -
O seasons, O castles,What soul is without flaws?All its lore is known to me,Felicity, it enchants us all.
Read quote