Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed –and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!”

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

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

“But the problem is to make the soul into a monster.”

“By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”

“Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.”

“Eternity is the sun mixed with the sea.”

“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”

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

“I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.”

“I could never throw Love out of the window.”

“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 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'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.”

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

“It is found again.
What? Eternity.
It is the sea.
Gone with the sun.”

“Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.”

“Misfortune was my god.”

“Morality is the weakness of the brain.”

“Morality is the weakness of the mind.”

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

“Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.”

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

“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 wolf howled under the leaves
And spit out the prettiest feathers
Of his meal of fowl:
Like him I consume myself.”

“These poets here, you see, they are not of this world: let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.”

“True life is elsewhere.”

“Unhappiness was my god.”