Quotes from Illuminations

“True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“I shed more tears than God could ever have required.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Quand le monde sera réduit en un seul bois noir pour nos quatre yeux étonnés, - en une plage pour deux enfants fidèles, - en une maison musicale pour notre claire sympathie, - je vous trouverai.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“I have stretched ropes from bell-tower to bell-tower; garlands from window to window; chains of gold from star to star, and I dance.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Against snow, a tall Beautiful Being. Whistlings of death and circles of muffled music make this adored body rise, swell and tremble like a ghost; scarlet and black wounds open in the magnificent flesh.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“La musique savante manque à notre désir”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Ho teso corde da campanile a campanile; ghirlande da finestra a finestra; catene d'oro da stella a stella, e danzo.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Peut-on s'extasier dans la destruction, se rajeunir par la cruauté !”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Estendi cordas de campanário a campanário; guirlandas de janela a janela; correntes de ouro de estrela a estrela, e danço.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Je dis qu'il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“cement in bold relief,—far underground. I lean my elbows on the table, and the lamp lights brightly the newspapers I am fool enough to re-read, and the absurd books.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Tenemos fe en el veneno. Sabemos dar nuestra vida entera, todos los días. He aquí el tiempo de los asesinos.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“AFTER THE DELUGE AS SOON as the idea of the Deluge had subsided, A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flower-bells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider’s web. Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,—and the flowers that already looked around. In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints. Blood flowed at Blue Beard’s,—through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God’s seal. Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built. “Mazagrans” smoked in the little bars. In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at the marvelous pictures. A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower. Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral. Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night. Ever after the moon heard jackals howling across the deserts of thyme, and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard. Then in the violet and budding forest, Eucharis told me it was spring. Gush, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;—black palls and organs, lightning and thunder, rise and roll;—waters and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again. For since they have been dissipated—oh! the precious stones being buried and the opened flowers!—it’s unbearable! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her fire in the earthen pot will never tell us what she knows, and what we do not know.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“O vento Sul me fez lembrar miseráveis incidentes de infância, meus desesperos de verão, a horrível quantidade de força e de ciência que o destino sempre afastou de mim. Não! não passaremos o verão neste país mesquinho onde nada mais seremos que noivos órfãos. Quero que este braço teso não arraste mais uma imagem querida.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“CHILDHOOD I That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt. At the border of the forest—dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare,—the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea. Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens,—young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy. What boredom, the hour of the “dear body” and “dear heart.” II”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Uyanık geçen geceler
I

Işıklı bir dinleniş bu, ne hararet ne bitkinlik, yatağın
üzerinde veya çayırların üstünde.
Dost bu, ne ateşli ne zayıf. Dost.
Sevgili bu, ne acı veren ne acı çeken. Sevgili.
Hiç aranmamış hava ve dünya. Hayat.
-Demek bu muydu?
-Ve rüya şiddetleniyor”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“Magical flowers were humming. The turf slopes cradled *him.* Beasts of a fabulous elegance were circulating. Storm clouds were piling up on the rising sea made of an eternity of hot tears.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“From castles of bone unknown music comes

But now, that toil rewarded; you, your calculations,
––you, your fits of impatience––are no more than your dancing and your voice, not fixed and certainly not forced, although an added reason for a double consequence of inventiveness + success, ––in brotherly and discreet humanity throughout the universe devoid of images;––force and justice reflect the
dancing and the voices which are only now esteemed.

The voices of instruction in exile... The body’s ingenuousness bit- terly put in its place... –– Adagio –– Ah! the infinite egotism of adolescence, the studious optimism: how full of flowers the world was that summer! Tunes and forms fading... ––A choir, to calm down impotence and absence! A choir of glass pieces, of nocturnal melodies... Soon, indeed, the nerves will slip their moorings.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

“how full of flowers the world was that summer! Tunes and forms fading... ––A choir, to calm down impotence and absence! A choir of glass pieces, of nocturnal melodies... Soon, indeed, the nerves will slip their moorings.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Illuminations

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Popular quotes

“They cut the menu from twenty-five items to nine, featuring hamburgers and cheeseburgers, and they made the burgers a little smaller—ten hamburgers from one pound of meat instead of eight.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties

“The individual parts played by other instrumentalists-- crickets or earthworms, for instance-- may not have the sound of music by themselves, but we hear them out of context. If we could listen to them all at once, fully orchestrated, in their immense ensemble, we might become aware of the counterpoint, the balance of tones and timbres and harmonics, the sonorities. The recorded songs of the humpback whale, filled with tensions and resolutions, ambiguities and allusions, incomplete, can be listened to as a a part of music, like an isolated section of an orchestra. If we had better hearing, we could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonies of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.”
― Lewis Thomas, quote from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

“A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land

“The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—
is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the
friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties
you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no
human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with
heaven, if Christ were not there? ”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself

“Have you ever looked at a map of our country, Necdet?’ Green Headscarf says. ‘It’s a map of the human mind. We’re split by water over two continents, Europe and Anatolia. We are seven per cent Europe, ninety-three per cent Asia. Conscious Thrace, unconscious, pre-conscious, sub-concious Anatolia. And Istanbul — have you ever seen a neuron, Necdet? A brain cell? The marvel is that the synapses don’t touch. There is always a gap — there must a gap, otherwise consciousness would not exist. The Bosphorus is that synaptic cleft. Potential can flow across the cleft. It’s the cleft that makes consciousness possible.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House

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