Quotes from Complete Works

Arthur Rimbaud ·  384 pages

Rating: (7.7K votes)


“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, quote from 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, quote from Complete Works


“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, quote from Complete Works


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


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


About the author

Arthur Rimbaud
Born place: in Charleville, France
Born date October 20, 1854
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