21 Paul Verlaine Quotes

Paul Verlaine quotes

1. Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deca, dela, Pareil a la Feuille morte.

2. La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramee.

3. Qu'as-tu fait, o toi que voila Pleurant sans cesse, Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voila De ta jeunesse?

4. De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela prefere l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air Sans rien en lui qui pese ou qui pose. Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir tes mots sans quelque meprise: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Ou l'Indecis au Precis se joint.

5. Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!

6. Prends l'eloquence et tords-lui son cou! Tu feras bien, en train d'energie, Du rendre un peu la Rime assagie. Si l'on n'y veille, elle ira jusqu'ou? O qui dira les torts de la Rime! Quel enfant sourd ou quel negre fou Nous a forge ce bijou d'un sou Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?

7. Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Eparse au vent crispe du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym: Et tout le reste est litterature.

1. A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

2. A flat black bug, that is London.

3. Music before all else, and for that choose the irregular, which is vaguer and melts better into the air.

4. Tears fall in my heart like the rain on the town.

5. Take eloquence and wring its neck.

6. Prends l'e loquence et tords-lui son cou! Take eloquence and break its neck!

7. Tears fall in my heart As tears fall on the town.

8. London, black as crows and noisy as ducks, prudish with all the vices in evidence, everlastingly drunk, in spite of ridiculous laws about drunkenness, immense, though it is really basically only a collection of scandal-mongering boroughs, vying with each other, ugly and dull, without any monuments except interminable docks.

9. Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart which beats only for you.

10. The poet is a madman lost in adventure.

11. I like this word decadent; all shimmering and purple and gold.

12. Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masked and costumed figures go Playing the lute and dancing and almost Sad beneath their fantastic disguises. All sing in a minor key Of all-conquering love and careless fortune They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight. The still moonlight, sad and beautiful, Which gives the birds to dream in the trees And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy, The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues.

13. I am the Empire at the end of the decadence.

14. I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary culture, a soul capable of intense pleasures. It throws off bursts of fire and the sparkle of precious stones. It is redolent of the rouge of courtesans, the games of the circus, the panting of the gladiators, the spring of wild beasts, the consuming in flames of races exhausted by their capacity for sensation, as the tramp of an invading army sounds.