Quotes from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies shall I uphold? In what blood tread?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“ONCE, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“I came a fabulous opera. I saw that all beings have a fatality for happiness: action is not life, but a way of spending your strength, an irritation. Morality is a weakness of the brain.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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 handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!

Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!

III

- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Now I am an outcast. I loathe the fatherland. The thing for me is a very drunken sleep on the beach.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Hire myself out to whom? What beast must I worship? What sacred images should I destroy? What hearts shall I break? What lies am I supposed to believe? March through whose blood?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Yes, my eyes are closed to your light. I am a beast, a nigger. But I can be saved. You are sham niggers, you, maniacs, fiends, misers. Merchant, you are a nigger; Judge, you are a nigger; General, you are a nigger; Emperor, old itch, you are a nigger: you have drank of the untaxed liquor of Satan’s still.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Aucun des sophismes de la folie, - la folie qu'on enferme, - n'a été oublié par moi : je pourrais les redire tous, je tiens le système.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“Oh! Science! Everything has been revised. For the body and for the soul,--the viaticum,—there are medicine and philosophy,—old wives' remedies and popular songs rearranged. And the pastimes of princes and games they proscribed! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!...

Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why shouldn’t it turn?

It is the vision of numbers. We are going toward the Spirit. There’s no doubt about it, an oracle, I tell you. I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“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, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies.

- Farewell”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“I am not a prisoner of my reason.

- Bad Blood”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

“O may it come, the time of love,
The time we'd be enamoured of.

- Song of the Highest Tower”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

About the author

Popular quotes

“Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.”
― Bryce Courtenay, quote from The Power of One

“Once upon a time,” I began. “There was a little boy born in a little town. He was perfect, or so his mother thought. But one thing was different about him. He had a gold screw in his belly button. Just the head of it peeping out.
“Now his mother was simply glad he had all his fingers and toes to count with. But as the boy grew up he realized not everyone had screws in their belly buttons, let alone gold ones. He asked his mother what it was for, but she didn’t know. Next he asked his father, but his father didn’t know. He asked his grandparents, but they didn’t know either.
“That settled it for a while, but it kept nagging him. Finally, when he was old enough, he packed a bag and set out, hoping he could find someone who knew the truth of it.
“He went from place to place, asking everyone who claimed to know something about anything. He asked midwives and physickers, but they couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The boy asked arcanists, tinkers, and old hermits living in the woods, but no one had ever seen anything like it.
“He went to ask the Cealdim merchants, thinking if anyone would know about gold, it would be them. But the Cealdim merchants didn’t know. He went to the arcanists at the University, thinking if anyone would know about screws and their workings, they would. But the arcanists didn’t know. The boy followed the road over the Stormwal to ask the witch women of the Tahl, but none of them could give him an answer.
“Eventually he went to the King of Vint, the richest king in the world. But the king didn’t know. He went to the Emperor of Atur, but even with all his power, the emperor didn’t know. He went to each of the small kingdoms, one by one, but no one could tell him anything.
“Finally the boy went to the High King of Modeg, the wisest of all the kings in the world. The high king looked closely at the head of the golden screw peeping from the boy’s belly button. Then the high king made a gesture, and his seneschal brought out a pillow of golden silk. On that pillow was a golden box. The high king took a golden key from around his neck, opened the box, and inside was a golden screwdriver.
“The high king took the screwdriver and motioned the boy to come closer. Trembling with excitement, the boy did. Then the high king took the golden screwdriver and put it in the boy’s belly button.”
I paused to take a long drink of water. I could feel my small audience leaning toward me. “Then the
high king carefully turned the golden screw. Once: Nothing. Twice: Nothing. Then he turned it the third time, and the boy’s ass fell off.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“What?” Hespe asked incredulously.
“His ass fell off.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, quote from The Wise Man's Fear

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
― Chinua Achebe, quote from Things Fall Apart

“They all ordered massive plates of eggs, pancakes, and reindeer sausage, though Frank looked a little worried about the reindeer. "You think it's okay that we're eating Rudolph?"

"Dude," Percy said, "I could eat Prancer and Blitzen, too. I'm hungry.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Son of Neptune

“But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Magician's Nephew

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