Complete Works Quotes

“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“It is found again.
What? Eternity.
It is the sea
Gone with the sun.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, آرتور رامبو: الآثار الشعرية

“Evening prayer

I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.

Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can't ignore,

And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“Ciel ! Amour ! Liberté ! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“These verses believe; they love; they hope; that is all.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“Those fine september nights, when the dew dropped
On my face and I licked it to get drunk.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“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, "A Winter Dream," Rimbaud: Selected Works. (A. S. Kline, 2002, 2003)”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“You break
From earthly approval
And common urges:
Then soar, accordingly”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“Eternas ondinas,
dividid el agua fina.
Venus, del azul hermana,
conmueve las puras aguas.

Judío errante en Noruega,
dime, ¿cómo nieva?
Viejos exiliados tiernos,
contadme el océano.

YO-. Nunca esas bebidas puras,
ni esas flores de florero,
ni leyendas, ni figuras,
saciarme pudieron.

Coplista, tu ahijada
es mi sed que se desboca,
hidra íntima sin bocas
que roe y devasta.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“DAWN I held the summer dawn in my arms. Nothing stirred in front of the palaces. The water was dead. Camps of shadows rested on the road through the woods. I walked, awakening live warm breaths as precious stones looked on and wings soundlessly rose. The first undertaking, in a path already filled with cool pale glimmers of light, was a flower that told me its name. I laughed at a blonde wasserfall whose tresses streamed between firs; at the silvered summit I recognized the goddess. So, one by one, I lifted her veils. In a lane, whirling my arms. In a field, shouting to a rooster. Into the city she fled, between steeples and domes, and I gave chase, running like a beggar on marble docks. At the crest of the road, near a stand of laurels, I enveloped her in her gathered veils, and felt something of her boundless shape. Dawn and the child fell to the forest floor. It was noon when I awoke.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire! ― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete. (Modern Library; Reprint edition January 14, 2003) Originally published 1870.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

“You’ll close your eyes to shadows Grimacing through windows This belligerent nocturnal realm, inhabited By black demons and black wolves. Then you’ll feel a tickle on your cheek… A little kiss like a crazed spider Fleeing down your neck… Bending your head backwards, you’ll say: “Get it!” —And we’ll take our time finding the beast —While it roams…”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Enough tears! Dawns break hearts. Every moon is wrong, every sun bitter: Love’s bitter bite has left me swollen, drunk with heat. Let my hull burst! Let me sink into the sea!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Love would live at the expense of its sister; Friendship lives at the expense of its brother.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Who—O filthy madmen—will tell of such languors And fouled mercies, and what will she know of hate When leprosy finally devours her benevolent body,”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“But vengeance? Never! And yet we crave it. Industrialists, princes, senators: die! Power, justice, history: kneel! We’re due. We want blood. Blood, and golden flames. My soul wants war; vengeance; terror! To war! We writhe in its Bite: Enough republics! We’ve had enough: of emperors, Regiments, colonists, peoples—enough! Who will stir the fiery whirlwinds’ fury If not ourselves and those we call our brothers?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“No hope here, Nul orietur1. Knowledge through patience, Suffering is certain.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Like steaming droppings in an old dovecote A thousand Dreams within me gently burn: And at times my sad heart is like sapwood Bleeding dark yellow gold where a branch is torn.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“And then sometimes a strange upheaval Finds its way within us, and we wish Your Angelic Hands were made paler still By making your fingers bleed.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Thereafter I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, Milky with reflected stars, devouring blue and green; A drowned sailor sometimes floated by Like some pale apotheosis, or flotsam lost in thought.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Lilies, lilies. So often mentioned, So seldom seen. In your verses, though They blossom like good intentions As sinners’ resolutions come and go.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Morality is a weakness of mind.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Bliss has finally set me free From desire’s tyranny. Its spell took soul and shape, Letting every goal escape. What do my words mean? Meaning flees, takes wing!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Thimothine! You were lovely! Were I a painter, I would memorialize your holy features on a canvas”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“But I am only a poet, and my tongue can only incompletely honor you…”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“one can’t help but sincerely desire that this Soul—lost in our midst and wishing death, or so it seems—find true comfort at that ultimate instant and, then, find itself worthy.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Women and men once believed in prophets. Now they believe in politicians.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“Make for death with every appetite intact, with your egotism, and every capital sin.” Ah. It seems I have too many already: —But, dear Satan, I beg you not to look at me that way, and while you await a few belated cowardices—you who so delight in a writer’s inability to describe or inform—watch me tear a few terrible leaves from my book of the damned.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete

“But no clock will ever do more than merely mark our hours of purest pain!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete