French Poetry Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about French Poetry.

Quotes About French Poetry

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I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went. ~ Paul Auster
French Poetry quotes by Paul Auster
I have drunk you and my thirst survives
But now I know the flavor of the cosmos ~ Guillaume Apollinaire
French Poetry quotes by Guillaume Apollinaire
Hair"

There is great mystery, Simone,
In the forest of your hair.
It smells of hay, and of the stone
Cattle have been lying on;
Of timber, and of new-baked bread
Brought to be one's breakfast fare;
And of the flowers that have grown
Along a wall abandonèd;

Of leather and of winnowed grain;
Of briers and ivy washed by rain;
You smell of rushes and of ferns
Reaped when day to evening turns;
You smell of withering grasses red
Whose seed is under hedges shed;

You smell of nettles and of broom;
Of milk, and fields in clover-bloom;
You smell of nuts, and fruits that one
Gathers in the ripe season;
And of the willow and the lime
Covered in their flowering time;

You smell of honey, of desire,
You smell of air the noon makes shiver:
You smell of earth and of the river;
You smell of love, you smell of fire.
There is great mystery, Simone,
In the forest of your hair.

Contemporary French Poetry, edited by Jethro Bithell (Wentworth Press March 4th 2019)

reply | edit | delete | flag * ~ Remy De Gourmont
French Poetry quotes by Remy De Gourmont
I hate French poetry. What measured glitter! ~ Israel Zangwill
French Poetry quotes by Israel Zangwill
No one's serious at seventeen,
When lindens line the promenades ~ Arthur Rimbaud
French Poetry quotes by Arthur Rimbaud
What bizarre things does not one find in a great city when one knows how to walk about and how to look! Life swarms with innocent monsters. Oh Lord my God, Thou Creator, Thou Master, Thou who hast made law and liberty, Thou the Sovereign who dost allow, Thou the Judge who dost pardon, Thou who art full of Motives and of Causes, Thou who hast (it may be) placed within my soul the love of horror in order to turn my hear to Thee, like the cure which follows the knife; Oh Lord, have pity, have pity upon the mad men and women that we are! Oh Creator, is it possible that monsters should exist in the eyes of Him alone who knoweth why they exist, how they have made themselves, and how they would have made themselves, and could not? ~ Charles Baudelaire
French Poetry quotes by Charles Baudelaire
Let's be honest - Bill Murray was onto something when he laughed at Andie MacDowell's degree in 19th century French poetry in 'Groundhog Day' ~ Marco Rubio
French Poetry quotes by Marco Rubio
Dreams, always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate is the soul, the more its dreams bear it away from possibility. Each man carries in himself his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed. From birth to death, how many hours can we count that are filled by positive enjoyment, by successful and decisive action? Shall we ever live, shall we ever pass into this picture which my soul has painted, this picture which resembles you?

These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miraculous flowers, they are you. Still you, these mighty rivers and these calm canals! These enormous ships that ride upon them, freighted with wealth, whence rise the monotonous songs of their handling: these are my thoughts that sleep or that roll upon your breast. You lead them softly towards that sea which is the Infinite; ever reflecting the depths of heaven in the limpidity of your fair soul; and when, tired by the ocean's swell and gorged with the treasures of the East, they return to their port of departure, these are still my thoughts enriched which return from the Infinite - towards you. ~ Charles Baudelaire
French Poetry quotes by Charles Baudelaire
Ce fut le temps sous de clairs ciels,
(Vous en souvenez-vous, Madame?)
De baisers superficiels
Et des sentiments à fleur d'âme.

It was a time of cloudless skies,
(My lady, do you recall?)
Of kisses that brushed the surface
And feelings that shook the soul. ~ Paul Verlaine
French Poetry quotes by Paul Verlaine
Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo
French Poetry quotes by Sri Aurobindo
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart ~ Alexander Pope
French Poetry quotes by Alexander Pope
I came from battling, knowing about the lyrics. All that's cool, but if you want people to love you, you have to talk to them about what they go through. ~ French Montana
French Poetry quotes by French Montana
Within days they'd formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi ~ Deborah Harkness
French Poetry quotes by Deborah Harkness
I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
French Poetry quotes by Barbara Kingsolver
You are there in my breaths and in the spaces between my breaths. ~ Avijeet Das
French Poetry quotes by Avijeet Das
Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
French Poetry quotes by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Like metaphor, paradox as a habit of mind preserves us from simplistic linearity and literalism and keeps us attentive to the complex ways in which, so often, the opposite is also true. This habit of mind is deeply biblical; indeed, to listen for the uses of paradox in Jesus' recorded teachings is to recognize how it always points us to a higher plane of understanding. To grasp paradox is a prerequisite not only for fathoming spiritual truths (and every spiritual tradition resorts to paradox to get at what is true as if there is no more direct route to truth), but also for thinking complexly and compassionately about this-worldly issues that affect us daily: how the rich may be poor; how power is a form of vulnerability; how saying no may be a way of saying yes. ~ Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
French Poetry quotes by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining. ~ Edward Abbey
French Poetry quotes by Edward Abbey
After an All-Blacks surprise loss to the French in the 1999 Rugby World Cup: The French are predictably unpredictable. ~ Andrew Mehrtens
French Poetry quotes by Andrew Mehrtens
The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols; that Nature is the immense shadow of man. A man's action is only a picture-book of his creed. He does after what he believes. Your condition, your employment, is the fable of you. The world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and taken his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every species of force in nature by giving it a human volition. We are advertised that there is nothing to which man is not related; that everything is convertible into every other. The staff in his hand is the radius vector of the sun. The chemistry of this is the chemistry of that. Whatever one act we do, whatever one thing we learn, we are doing and learning all things, - marching in the direction of universal power. Every healthy mind is a true Alexander or Sesostris, building a universal monarchy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
French Poetry quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion. ~ Dylan Thomas
French Poetry quotes by Dylan Thomas
For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago. ~ Washington Irving
French Poetry quotes by Washington Irving
A language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it. - ~ Gwendolyn MacEwen
French Poetry quotes by Gwendolyn MacEwen
PISTOL-
Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy: ask me this slave in French What is his name.
Boy-
Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?
French Soldier-
Monsieur le Fer.
Boy-
He says his name is Master Fer.
PISTOL-
Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in French unto him.
Boy-
I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk. ~ William Shakespeare
French Poetry quotes by William Shakespeare
Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence. ~ Virginia Woolf
French Poetry quotes by Virginia Woolf
Wake up, wake up!' He said to me
'No, I'm still sleepy,
do not disturb me'
Wake up me child, see the beauty

Don't cry, wipe your tears, He said to me
'No, I'm so lonely,
Nobody understands me'
Don't cry my child, embrace the beauty

Don't panic, be calm, He said to me
'No, you don't understand,
I need to earn money'
Don't struggle my child, connect to the beauty

Don't blame or attach, He said to me
'How can I be loving,
When they hurt me?'
Don't retaliate my child, show them the beauty

Don't withhold your love, He said to me
'How can I give Father
When they only take from me?'
Don't fear my child, I replenish the beauty ~ Elise Icten
French Poetry quotes by Elise Icten
I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them. ~ Jacques Pepin
French Poetry quotes by Jacques Pepin
It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come. -Winnie-the-Pooh ~ A.A. Milne
French Poetry quotes by A.A. Milne
I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
French Poetry quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau
French Poetry quotes by Jean Cocteau
When most people use the word 'freedom' nowadays, they use it in the sense of the French Revolutionaries: freedom from tradition, from established social institutions, from religious doctrines, from prescriptive duties. I think that this employment of the word does much mischief. For we do not live in an age - and there are such ages - which is oppressed by the dead weight of archaic establishments and obsolete custom. The danger in our era, rather, is that the fountains of the great deep will be broken up and that the pace of alteration will be so rapid that generation cannot link with generation. Our era, necessarily, is what Matthew Arnold called an epoch of concentration. Or, at least, the thinking American needs to turn his talents to concentration, the buttressing and reconstruction of our moral and social heritage. This is a time not for anarchic freedom, but for ordered freedom. There are much older and stronger concepts of freedom than that espoused by the French Revolutionaries. In the Christian tradition, freedom is submission to the will of God. This is no paradox. As he that would save his life must lose it, so the man who desires true freedom must recognize a providential order which gives all freedoms their sanction. The theory of 'natural rights' depends upon the premise of an on alterable human nature bestowed upon man by God. Only acceptance of the divine order can give enduring freedom to a society; for this lacking, there is no reason why the strong and th ~ Russell Kirk
French Poetry quotes by Russell Kirk
Seed Leaves

Homage to R. F.

Here something stubborn comes,

Dislodging the earth crumbs

And making crusty rubble.

it comes up bending double,

And looks like a green staple.

It could be seedling maple,

Or artichoke, or bean.

That remains to be seen.



Forced to make choice of ends,

The stalk in time unbends,

Shakes off the seed-case, heaves

Aloft, and spreads two leaves

Which still display no sure

And special signature.

Toothless and fat, they keep

The oval form of sleep.



This plant would like to grow

And yet be embryo;

In crease, and yet escape

The doom of taking shape;

Be vaguely vast, and climb

To the tip end of time

With all of space to fill,

Like boundless Igdrasil

That has the stars for fruit.



But something at the root

More urgent that the urge

Bids two true leaves emerge;

And now the plant, resigned

To being self-defined

Before it can commerce

With the great universe,

Takes aim at all the sky

And starts to ramify. ~ Richard Wilbur
French Poetry quotes by Richard Wilbur
In the afternoon I drank Coke and wrote poetry. ~ Don DeLillo
French Poetry quotes by Don DeLillo
Why does everyone see me as a sink when I am an ocean? ~ Maria Elena
French Poetry quotes by Maria Elena
The most beautiful videos
come from reading poetry.
And they're in your head. ~ Ruth Stone
French Poetry quotes by Ruth Stone
I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. ~ John Berryman
French Poetry quotes by John Berryman
Drugs
to me
have always been
a pretty girl
with a sly smile
beckoning me
with a finger
down the dark path
of a fork in the road. ~ Atticus Poetry
French Poetry quotes by Atticus Poetry
Her beauty is a mastery of peace. ~ Delano Johnson
French Poetry quotes by Delano Johnson
My research is like my feeling, directed towards what is the principle value in the life
the poetry. ~ Le Corbusier
French Poetry quotes by Le Corbusier
I want books written out of a brain and heart and soul crowded and vital with Life, spelled with a big L. I want poetry bursting with passion. I don't care a hang for the 'verbal felicities.' They'll do for the fringe, but I want the garment to warm me first. ~ Gertrude Atherton
French Poetry quotes by Gertrude Atherton
With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling. ~ Richard Brautigan
French Poetry quotes by Richard Brautigan
Homosexuals are delicate and bad poetry is delicate and [Allen] Ginsberg turned the tables by making homosexual poetry strong poetry, almost manly poetry; but in the long run, the homo will remain the homo and not the poet. ~ Charles Bukowski
French Poetry quotes by Charles Bukowski
So the nymphs they spoke,
we kissed and laid.
By noontime's hour
our love was made.
Like braided chains of crocus stems,
we lay entwined, I laid with them.
Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,
our bodies draping wearily,
we slept, I slept so lucidly,
with hopes to stay this memory. ~ Roman Payne
French Poetry quotes by Roman Payne
I couldn't know about my culture, my history, without learning the language, so I started learning Arabic - reading, writing. I used to speak Arabic before that, but Tunisian Arabic dialect. Step by step, I discovered calligraphy. I painted before and I just brought the calligraphy into my artwork. That's how everything started. The funny thing is the fact that going back to my roots made me feel French. ~ EL Seed
French Poetry quotes by EL Seed
Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds ... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it ... ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti
French Poetry quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Pleasure so exquisite that her entire body thrummed with it, and emotions so expansive and consuming that she didn't know where Lucien ended and she began. ~ Kitty French
French Poetry quotes by Kitty French
No doubt, the poetry, overjoyed by swallowing the beverage of passionate thoughts, delights the mind. But she does not realize the sorrows and troubles of the poor. Forget depicting the beauty of passions and present your poetry as a necklace of thought gems to swell the soul. ~ Manmohan Acharya
French Poetry quotes by Manmohan Acharya
The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many ... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
French Poetry quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy. ~ Dean Young
French Poetry quotes by Dean Young
We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't," says slam poet and teacher Clint Smith. A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice. ~ Clint Smith
French Poetry quotes by Clint   Smith
The rose leaves its remains on the ground,
Its petals to be noticed one last time-
As it melts into the ground
With its fellow kind. ~ LaNona Walker
French Poetry quotes by LaNona Walker
Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it. ~ Marilyn French
French Poetry quotes by Marilyn French
I'm a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I'm concerned. ~ Miles Davis
French Poetry quotes by Miles Davis
Even the common things he carried with him - the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol - took on exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. ~ G.K. Chesterton
French Poetry quotes by G.K. Chesterton
They had had half an hour. He walked with her to Whitehall, toward the bus stop. In the precious final minutes he wrote out his address for her, a bleak sequence of acronyms and numbers. "then, at last, he took her hand and squeezed. The gesture had to carry all that had not been said, and she answered it with pressure from her own hand. Her bus came, and she did not let go. They were standing face to face. He kissed her, lightly at first, but they drew closer, and when their tongues touched, a disembodied part of himself was abjectly grateful, for he knew he now had a memory in the bank and would be drawing on it for months to come. He was drawing on it now, in a French barn, They tightened their embrace and went on kissing while people edged past them in the queue. She was crying onto his cheek, and her sorrow stretched her lips against his. Another bus arrived. She pulled away, squeezed his wrist, and got on without a word and didn't look back. He watched her find her seat, and as the bus began to move realized he should have gone with her, all the way to the hospital. He had thrown away minutes in her company. He must learn again how to think "and act for himself. He began to run along hoping to catch up with her at the next stop. But her bus was far ahead ~ Ian McEwan
French Poetry quotes by Ian McEwan
Infinity is the end. End without infinity is but a new beginning. ~ Dejan Stojanovic
French Poetry quotes by Dejan Stojanovic
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