French Poet Quotes

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet. ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. Source: Wikipedia ~ Victor Hugo

I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, his first name. Eighteen was not all that young an age then. But what was I going to do? ~ Anthony Burgess

Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach "Land of a Thousand Dances": she's caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that's really exciting. She's not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot.

Another great woman writer is Iris Sarazan, who wrote The Runaway. She considered herself a mare, a wild runaway. She was a really intelligent girl stuck in all these convents with a hungry mind. I identify with her 'cause of her hunger to go beyond herself. She wound up in prison, but she escaped and wrote some great books before kicking off. Her books aren't page after page of her beating her breast about how shitty she's been treated, they're books about her exciting telescoping plans of escape. Rhythm, great wild rhythm....

The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women. He was the first guy who ever made a big women's liberation statement, saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men they're really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties. And I believe in that completely. (1976 Penthouse interview) ~ Patti Smith

Trip on this! Haile Selassie, who Rastafari regard as God, was possibly greatly influenced by a French poet who although he gave up writing at the age of 20 (which at first glance appears like a huge waste) must certainly have still held an esoteric, otherworldly mind. It can't have just deserted him, can it? Rimbaud had a bewitching and at times ghoulish psyche which managed to explode out of long-established poetic forms while still in his teens. He did it with more rhythm and beauty than almost anyone you care to name. It's extremely likely that ten years later this man had incredible influence on the child who Rastafari were to later think of as God.

An intriguing thought. ~ Karl Wiggins

Rumour has a hundred mouths. ~ Paul Verlaine

Unlike babies, phenomena are typically born long before humans give them names. Zurara did not call Black people a race. French poet Jacques de Brézé first used the term "race" in a 1481 hunting poem. In 1606, the same diplomat who brought the addictive tobacco plant to France formally defined race for the first time in a major European dictionary, "Race…means descent," Jean Nicot wrote in the Trésor de la langue française. "Therefore, it is said that a man, a hors, a dog or another animal is from a good or bad race." From the beginning, to make races was to make racial hierarchy.

Gomes de Zurara grouped all those peoples from Africa into a single race for that very reason: to create hierarchy, the first racist idea. Race making is an essential ingredient in the making of racist ideas, the crust that holds the pie. Once a race has been created it must be filled in-and Zurara filled it with negative qualities that would justify Prince Henry's evangelical mission to the world. This Black race of people was lost, living "like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings, " Zurara wrote. "They had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in a bestial sloth. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

The French poet Mallarmé claimed that "everything in the world exists to end up in a book," and if that's true, and that even every boy is a book, Federico was undoubtedly created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo was pure passion, like Shakespeare's Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and impetuously real. ~ Mirella Muffarotto

I once got a postcard from a French poet who wrote - "you don't know me but I'm always very grumpy when I get up in morning. But when I get up now I put the tea kettle on, and when it starts to sing it makes me smile - goddamn you!" That's what happened when we first designed it - we got a lot of mail. ~ Michael Graves

I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work. ~ Joy Harjo

Habit is a good thing for the human race ... You have to spend so much energy just getting through the day when you have no habits that you don't have any left for productive labor. ~ Marilyn French

Celebrate my heart, at ease or on fire, in my usual featherbrained way.

Horace, Roman Poet
Ode I-6, 23 BCE ~ Vivian Swift

Every poet creates their own universe that looks more beautiful than reality. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

I only speak a little pigeon French. Just enough to get by with the little French pigeons. ~ Bob Hope

He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world. ~ Coco Chanel

There, he said. You see? You see how this is bad for one's billiard game? This thinking? The French have come into my house to mutilate my billiard game. No evil is beyond them. ~ Cormac McCarthy

There are several reasons why a study of the French military experience in Algeria in this present work is necessary. The entire doctrinal system contained within Casey's Infantry Tactics and Hardee's Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics originated with the French infantry's experiences in North Africa, and these were but translations of a work utilized by French chasseurs and Zouaves. ~ Brent Nosworthy

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In your opinion, where do private and political life, personal history and History meet? You know the answer, Maya. You say it unhesitatingly - in art and literature. ~ Abdourahman A. Waberi

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place for him to sell his creation. ~ Jean-Jacques Annaud

This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form. ~ Tana French

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style. ~ Vincent Cassel

She didn't laugh, just dropped the bag inside the door. You asked me to stay with you until Sunday. I'm all yours. ~ Kitty French

Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood. ~ Herb Ritts

What's that?" said Ron, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding.
"Bouillabaisse," said Hermione.
"Bless you," said Ron.
"It's French," said Hermione. ~ J.K. Rowling

You can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold. ~ Ken Kesey

She was older, no longer the wicked limber girl with the stalled Vespa, but no less beautiful to me for that: whatever elliptical beauty Cassie possesses has always lain not in the vulnerable planes of color and texture but deeper, in the polished contours of her bones. ~ Tana French

Lexie Madison developed out of nothing like a Polaroid, she curled off the page and hung in the air like incense smoke, a girl with my face and a life from a half-forgotten dream. ~ Tana French

Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it. ~ Salvador Dali

The problem is that to be a producer, one must be a gambler, and the greatest French producers were gamblers. ~ Marcel Carne

Okay. Well, firstly, Marcel is not my mortal enemy - he is my friend, albeit one who is unaware that I'm trying to sabotage his hold over the supernatural community of the French Quarter, but a friend nonetheless. And secondly, I daggered Elijah in order to gain Marcel's trust. If I had known he would place my brother in the hands of a particularly nasty teenaged witch, I certainly would have weighed my options a bit differently. And thirdly, sister, please. ~ Klaus Mikaelson

I want a homing beacon on your vehicle."
"There will be."
"No, I want one on before we leave the grounds in the morning. I'll see to it."
Give and take, she reminded herself. Even when
maybe especially when
give and take was a pain in the ass. "Okay. But there go my plans to slip off and meet Pablo the pool boy for an hour of hot, sticky sex."
"We all have to make sacrifices. Myself, I've had to reschedule my liaison with Vivien the French maid three times in the last couple of days."
"Blows," Eve said as they slipped into bed.
"She certainly does. ~ J.D. Robb

She [88yo Mrs Fitzgerald] crossed herself and patted my arm. "And you're after coming all the way from England to find out who done it? Aren't you great? God bless you, young fella."
"The old heretic," I said, when we got outside. Mrs. Fitzgerald had cheered up my day immensely. "I hope I have that much zip when I'm eighty-eight ~ Tana French

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity-he is continually infirming and filling some other body. ~ John Keats

You have that faraway look in your eyes that makes me want to pull you into my dreams, bring you to your knees worshiping me - desperately. You, the nectar and the muse of my poetry. ~ Melody Lee

I plan to be a sinner tonight. Could've been something else, but looked way too good in my red dress to be anything Christian. ~ Alysia Harris

His eyes narrowed. "Is this where the elephants come in? Because there was something about elephants in that French book. ~ J. Kathleen Cheney

The poet is a maker, not a retail trader. ~ Louis MacNeice

In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it's complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they've had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language. ~ Mark Zero

Adversity does more than build character. It changes the way we see the world. ~ Michael R. French

We part, then, for the nonce, do we?'
'I fear so, sir.'
'You take the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I shall miss you, Jeeves.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Who was that chap who was always beefing about gazelles?'
'The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well, it was sure to die.'
'It's the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don't mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?'
'Not at all, sir. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal. ~ Jose Bergamin

As the component parts of all new machines may be said to be old[,] it is a nice discriminating judgment, which discovers that a particular arrangement will produce a new and desired effect ... Therefore, the mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc. like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as the exhibition of his thoughts; in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea to the world. ~ Robert Fulton

Such is the nature and make-up of the French that they are only good at the start. Then they are worse than devils, but, given time, they're less than women. ~ Francois Rabelais

Poetry contains few words but tells much. Its beauty is that by being condensed it is rich in meaning and open to various interpretations. Unlike prose, there is no boundary to poetry. There is nothing concrete or black and white. Poetry is mutable; it is transformative. Poetry is the alchemy of hearts. And what cannot be said in prose can sometimes be only said through poetry. ~ Salil Jha

This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution. ~ Edvard Munch

At the Sound of the Gunshot,
Leave A Message

That's what my friend spoke
into his grim machine the winter he first went mad
as we both did in our thirties with still
no hope of revenue, gravely inking
our poems on pages held fast by gyres
the color of lead.

Godless, our minds
did monster us, left us bobbing as in a swamp
until we sank. His eyes were burn holes
in a swollen face. His breath was a venom
he drank deep of. He called his own tongue
a scar, this poet

who can crowbar open
the most sealed heart, make ash flower,
and the cocked shotgun's double-zero mouths
(whose pellets had exploded star holes into plaster and porcelain
and not a few locked doors) never touched
my friend's throat. Praise

Him, whose earth is green.

(for Franz Wright) ~ Mary Karr

Must be going crazy---

my favorite poet lately

has been me! ~ Wayne Kaumualii Westlake

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Jan 7 at 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: Really?
On the Tumblr-you mean creeksecrets? .....
But I really don't think I'm wrong.
Jacques a dit. Right?
-Blue

So, Yeah, I've been careless. I guess I left a trail of clues. and I shouldn't be surprised that Blue put them together. Maybe I kind of wanted him to.

Jacques a dit is "Simon Says" in French, by the way, And it's obviously not as clever as I thought it was. ~ Becky Albertalli

In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint. ~ Aimee Bender

If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak. ~ Ben Lerner

writing home"

here in the wilderness of australia
writing home becomes easy
in spite of the spreading wild fires
there is less heat, more certainty.

writing home, writing this
i think of those without real homes–
our city, people say, provides houses
which do not, often, bring one home. ~ Kirpal Singh