Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.
Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.
A little too much is just enough for me.
Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture.
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
I expect a black silence that is almost as violent as laughter.
Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
Beauty makes one lose one’s head. Poetry is born of this decapitation.