Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn ~ Arthur Rimbaud

turn your face towards the lances of rain, the soul towards ancient wisdom. And ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I'm the Saint praying on a balcony - like peaceful beasts grazing along the Sea of Palestine.
I'm the scholar in a plain reading chair. Branches and rain beat the library windows.
I'm the pedestrian on the high road through the stunted woods; the sound of floodgates drowns out my footsteps. I stare at the melancholy wash of another golden sunset...
The path is harsh. The hillocks are weed. The air is still. How far we are from birds and streams. The end of the world must be just ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

It was the voice of mad seas, roaring immense,/ That shattered your infant breast, too soft, too human. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am an animal, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are fake niggers; maniacs, savages, misers, all of you. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I could never throw Love out of the window. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I invented the colors of the vowels!
A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green
I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

Since they weren't sleepy and nothing had been left unsaid, they began to read poetry to each other, taking turns like children and enjoying it. Bachir had a lovely voice, one that was already that of a man. He knew many poems by heart. He lovingly recited Victor Hugo, with warmth Rimbaud's Le bateau ivre, and poems written by young people going into battle; he then moved on to the poets of liberty - Rimbaud again, Eluard, and Desnos. ~ Assia Djebar

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

Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with Author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alik ~ Henry Miller

Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! - But the great Faith is Love! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

There shall be poets! When woman's unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man
hitherto detestable
having let her go, she, too, will be poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her ideational worlds be different from ours? She will come upon strange, unfathomable, repellent, delightful things; we shall take them, we shall comprehend them. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Yet this is the watch by night.
Let us all accept new strength, and
real tenderness. And at dawn, armed
with glowing patience, we will enter
the cities of glory. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

But no one leaves. - Let us set out once more on our native roads, burdened with my vice, that vice that since the age of reason has driven roots of suffering into my side - that towers to heaven, beats me, hurls me down, drags me on.

Ultimate innocence, final timidity. All's said. Carry no more my loathing and treacheries before the world.

Come on! Marching, burdens, the desert, boredom and anger.

Hire myself to whom? What beasts adore? What sacred images destroy? What hearts shall I break? What lie maintain? - Through what blood wade?

Better to keep away from justice. - A hard life, outright stupor, - with a dried-out fist to lift the coffin lid, lie down, and suffocate. No old age this way, no danger: terror is very un-French.

- Ah! I am so forsaken I will offer at any shrine impulses toward perfection.

Oh my self-denial, my marvelous Charity! my Selfless love! And still here below!

De Profundis Domine, what an ass I am! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

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

You feel on your lips a kiss Fluttering, a tiny scrap of life ... ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. So patient have I been That I've forgetten everything: Fear and suffering Have departed for the heavens, And an unholy thirst Darkens my veins. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. Like the field Left to forgetfulness, Growing and flowering With incense and weeds, And the fierce buzzing Of dirty flies. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

O great Ariadne who pour out your tears
On the shore, as you see, out there on the waves,
The sail of Theseus flying white under the sun,
O sweet virgin child whom a night has broken,
Be silent!
-Sun and Flesh (Credo in Unam) ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Magical flowers were humming. The turf slopes cradled *him.* Beasts of a fabulous elegance were circulating. Storm clouds were piling up on the rising sea made of an eternity of hot tears. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

From castles of bone unknown music comes ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I am unknown: so what?
This verses believe; they love; they hope: that's enough. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
Someday I shall tell of your mysterious births:
A, black velvety corset of dazzling flies
Buzzing around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, white innocence of vapors and of tents,
Spears of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of Queen Anne's lace;
I, purples, spitting blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in drunken penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of green seas,
The calm of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of furrows
Which alchemy prints on wide, studious foreheads;
O, sublime Bugle full of strange piercing sound,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels;
- O the Omega, the violet ray of her Eyes! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

It is found again.
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Gone with the sun. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

True life is elsewhere ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22. ~ Edward Hirsch

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

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. - Arthur Rimbaud ~ Cassandra Clare

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

Come back, come back, dear friend, only friend, come back. I promise to be good.
If I was short with you, I was either kidding or just being stubborn; I regret all this more than I can express. Come back and all is forgotten. It is unbearable to think you took my joke seriously. I have been crying for two days straight. Come back. Be brave, dear friend. All is not lost. You only need to come back. We will live here once again, bravely, patiently. I'm begging you. You know it is for your own good. Come back, all of your things are here. I hope you now know that our last conversation wasn't real. That awful moment. But you, when I waved to you to get off the boat, why didn't you come? To have lived together for two years and to have come to that! What will you do? If you don't want to come back here, would you want me to come to you?

Yes, I was wrong.

Tell me you haven't forgotten me.

You couldn't.

I always have you with me.

Listen, tell me: should we not live together anymore?
Be brave. Write immediately.
I can't stay here much longer.
Listen to your heart.
Now, tell me if I should come join you.
My life is yours. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

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 ... ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

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. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that graze down to the sea of Palestine.
I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves at the windows of my library.
I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy wash of the setting sun.
I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.
The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be the end of the world ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

You have to pass an exam, and the jobs that you get are either to shine shoes, or to herd cows, or to tend pigs. Thank God, I don't want any of that! Damn it! And besides that they smack you for a reward; they call you an animal and it's not true, a little kid, etc.. Oh! Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

But the problem is to make the soul into a monster ~ Arthur Rimbaud

O witches, O misery, O hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted! I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the strength of a wild beast. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand, misfortune was my God. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the green azure where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;
Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
The bitter redness of love ferments! ~ Rimbaud Arthur

But, true, I've wept too much! Dawns break hearts./ Every moon is brutal, every sun bitter. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Thus he spent his whole life searching for his own truth, but it remained hidden to him because he had learned at a very young age to hate himself for what his mother had done to him. ( ... ) But not once did he allow himself to direct his endless, justified rage at the true culprit, the woman who had kept him locked up in her prison for as long as she could. All his life he attempted to free himself of that prison, with the help of drugs, travel, illusions, and above all poetry. But in all these desperate efforts to open the doors that would have led to liberation, one of them remained obstinently shut, the most important one: the door to the emotional reality of his childhood, to the feelings of the little child who was forced to grow up with a severely disturbed, malevolent woman, with no father to protect him from her. ~ Alice Miller

Cement in bold relief, - far underground. I lean my elbows on the table, and the lamp lights brightly the newspapers I am fool enough to re-read, and the absurd books. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

By being too sensitive I have wasted my life. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

For River to discover himself in Rimbaud's life and Miller's prose was simultaneously self-aggrandizing and self-pitying. Tellingly, he was more interested in Miller's book than in Rimbaud's actual writing: he responded to Rimbaud not as a poet, but as a symbol. ~ Gavin Edwards

I

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.

It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;

It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a hands ~ Arthur Rimbaud

A storm came chasing the sky away. And virgin sands
Drank all the water of the evening woods,
God's wind blew icicles into the ponds;
As I wept I saw gold,- and could not drink.

- Delirium II - Alchemy of the Word ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Come from forever, and you will go everywhere. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

I have withered within me all human hope. With every silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.
I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty? ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I saw that all living things were doomed, to bliss: that's not living; it's just a way to waste what we have, a drain. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I am not a prisoner of my reason.

- Bad Blood ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

Now I am an outcast. I loathe the fatherland. The thing for me is a very drunken sleep on the beach. ~ Arthur Rimbaud Or Jimmy Buffet

I may die of earthly love, or of devotion. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I'd rather remain silent ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Here I am on the shore of Brittany. Let the cities light up in the evening. My day is done. I am leaving Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs. Lost climates will tan me. I will swim, trample the grass, hung, and smoke especially. I will drink alcohol as strong as boiling metal
just as my dear ancestors did around their fires. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

True alchemy lies in this formula: 'Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I learned a lot from Arthur Rimbaud. People talk about how he wanted to be a seer and do that through the derangement of the senses. What they forget was that he also advocated, sternly and austerely, that one must be able to go through all that - and then articulate it. ~ Patti Smith

Unhappiness was my god. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies.

- Farewell ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The world progresses! Why shouldn't it turn as well? ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Morality is the weakness of the mind. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

A Winter Dream"

In winter we'll travel in a little pink carriage
With cushions of blue.
We'll be fine. A nest of mad kisses waits
In each corner too.

You'll shut your eyes, not to see, through the glass,
Grimacing shadows of evening,
Those snarling monsters, a crowd going past
Of black wolves and black demons.

Then you'll feel your cheek tickled quite hard…
A little kiss, like a maddened spider,
Will run over your neck…

And you'll say: "Catch it!" bowing your head,
– And we'll take our time finding that creature
– Who travels so far… ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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 ~ Arthur Rimbaud

When we are strongest- who draws back?
Most merry- who falls down laughing?
When we are very bad,- what can they do to us? ~ Arthur Rimbaud

We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color. ~ William S. Burroughs

Priests, professors, masters, you are wrong to turn me over to Justice. I have never belonged to this people. I have never been Christian. I am of the race that sang under torture. I do not understand your laws. I have no moral sense, I am a brute. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The white men are landing. Cannons! Now we must be baptized, get dressed, and go to work. My heart has been stabbed by grace. Ah! I hadn't thought this would happen! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The hallucinations are innumerable. That's what has always been the matter with me, in fact: no belief in history, obliviousness of principles. I shall say no more about this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am a thousand times the richest, let's be as miserly as the sea. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

CHILDHOOD I That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt. At the border of the forest - dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, - the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea. Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens, - young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy. What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart." II ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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

I have stretched ropes from bell-tower to bell-tower; garlands from window to window; chains of gold from star to star, and I dance. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I will never possess my hand. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

But to explore the invisible and to hear the unheard are very different from reviving the dead: Baudelaire is therefore first among seers, the king of poets, a true God. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

I say that one must be a visionary - that one must make oneself a VISIONARY. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

But today I would suggest you ponder these verses from Ecclesiastes: "And he would have seven flights of madness in his soul, who, having hung his clothes beneath the sun, would groan at the hour of rain, ~ Arthur Rimbaud