Guillaume Apollinaire Quotes

The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension.

And God said come to the edge." "I can't. I'm afraid." "Come to the edge." "I can't. I'll fall" "Come to the edge." I went to the edge and God pushed me ... ... .and I flew.

Matisse renovates rather than innovates.

How slow life is, how violent hope is.

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
As herds of bellowing buses drive by
Love's anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life
It's a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up

Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
Come to the edge," he said.
They came.
He pushed them ... and they flew.

II
I'm no longer myself in here
I know
I'm number fifteen in the eleventh
Row

Shall we the shipwrecked drown and dream
A further voyage to farther stars

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom the windows observe shame keeps you
From entering a church and confessing this morning
You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud
That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapers
There are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries
Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines
("Zone")

Color is the fruit of life.

Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind.

Joy always came after pain.

All the words I have to say have turned into stars.

I have drunk you and my thirst survives
But now I know the flavor of the cosmos

I had the courage to look backward
The ghosts of my days

In this mirror,
I am enclosed a live and real as you.
Imagine angels and not like the reflections.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Her eyes were dancing like those of angels.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

It's raining women's voices
as if they had died
even in memory,
and it's raining you as well-
Marvellous encounters of my life
(o little drops!)

One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere.

Six mirrors keep staring at one another
("Monday rue Christine")

Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff and bird-changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky.

Horse
[Man you will find here
a new representation of the universe
at its most poetic and most modern
Man man man man man man
Give yourself up to this art where the sublime
does not exclude charm
and brilliancy does not blur the nuance
it is now or never the moment
to be sensitive to poetry for it dominates
all dreadfully
Guillaume Apollinaire]

When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg.

Without poets, without artists ... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.

I don't want to work. I want to smoke.

Today you are walking in Paris the women are all steeped in blood
It was and I'd rather not remember it was at beauty's decline

Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.

Memory is a hunting horn
Its tone dies out along the wind.

My blue mask as a God puts on his sky

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.

Without artists, the order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish.

We cannot carry our father's corpse with us everywhere we go.