Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (UK:20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian War.During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output.

Arthur Rimbaud Quotes

1. “What am I doing here?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

2. “True life is elsewhere.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

3. “A thousand Dreams within me softly burn.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

4. “The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

5. “Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

6. “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

7. “It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

8. “Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

9. “Unhappiness was my god.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

10. “I may die of earthly love, or of devotion.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

11. “Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

12. “I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

13. “My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

14. “I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

15. “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

16. “Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

17. “I is another.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

18. “No one’s serious at seventeen.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

19. “I’m intact, and I don’t give a damn.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

20. “What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

21. “I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

22. “Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

23. “I shed more tears than God could ever have required.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

24. “Stronger than alcohol, vaster than poetry, Ferment the freckled red bitterness of love!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

25. “Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

26. “Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

27. “One evening I sat Beauty on my knees – And I found her bitter – And I reviled her.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

28. “Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don’t know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

29. “And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! – But the great Faith is Love!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

30. “Your memory and your senses will be nourishment for your creativity.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

31. “Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

32. “Morality is the weakness of the mind.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

33. “The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

34. “The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

35. “It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

36. “You will always be a hyena.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

37. “I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

38. “As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

39. “Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

40. “Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

41. “The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

42. “I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

43. “I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

44. “I could never throw Love out of the window.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

45. “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

46. “But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

47. “I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

48. “But the problem is to make the soul into a monster.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

49. “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

50. “The northern lights rise like a kiss to the sea.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

51. “O seasons, O castles, What soul is without flaws? All its lore is known to me, Felicity, it enchants us all.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

52. “All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

53. “I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

54. “You feel on your lips a kiss Fluttering, a tiny scrap of life…”
— Arthur Rimbaud

55. “I wrote silences; nights; I recorded the unnameable.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

56. “Faith assuages, guides, restores.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

57. “Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

58. “The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

59. “I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

60. “And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

61. “Hay que ser absolutamente Moderno.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

62. “A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn’t he?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

63. “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

64. “And, in the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

65. “Oh! If only we were naked now, and free to watch our protruding parts align; To whisper – both of us – in ecstasy!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

66. “Come back, come back, dear friend, only friend, come back. I promise to be good.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

67. “Aphrodite’s thirst was never quenched; it was cruel and dreamy. It was certainly the most splendid kind of thirst.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

68. “What an old maid I’m getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

69. “The Poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

70. “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

71. “What will happen to the world when you leave it? Nothing, in any case, will remain of what is now visible.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

72. “In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

73. “Priests, professors, masters, you are wrong to turn me over to Justice. I have never belonged to this people. I have never been Christian. I am of the race that sang under torture. I do not understand your laws. I have no moral sense, I am a brute.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

74. “I’m now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I’m working at turning myself into a seer. You won’t understand any of this, and I’m almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It’s really not my fault.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

75. “Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

76. “While public funds evaporate in feasts of fraternity, a bell of rosy fire rings in the clouds.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

77. “Delivered to oblivion… growing and flowering with incense and weeds to the sullen whine of nasty flies… I loved deserts, burnt out orchards, faded boutiques… I dragged myself down stinking alleyways… General, if there’s an old cannon left, aim for the glass of splendid shops, into the living rooms… make the city eat its own dust.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

78. “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

79. “The hallucinations are innumerable. That’s what has always been the matter with me, in fact: no belief in history, obliviousness of principles. I shall say no more about this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am a thousand times the richest, let’s be as miserly as the sea.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

80. “I saw that all living things were doomed, to bliss: that’s not living; it’s just a way to waste what we have, a drain.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

81. “I am unknown; what does it matter? Poets are brothers. These lines believe; they love; they hope; and that is all. Dear Master, help me up a little. I am young. Hold out your hand to me.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

82. “I will never possess my hand.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

83. “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

84. “The world progresses! Why shouldn’t it turn as well?”
— Arthur Rimbaud

85. “I looked on the disorder of my mind as sacred. Disaster was my God.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

86. “This lofty thought proves I dreamt it!”
— Arthur Rimbaud

87. “I will tear the veils from every mystery: mysteries of religion or of nature, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony, and nothingness. I am a master of phantasmagoria.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

88. “From castles of bone unknown music comes.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

89. “And think of me. It’s worth the loss of the world. I’m lucky to see my suffering ended. Alas: my life was little more than a few mild madnesses.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

90. “I am hidden and I am not.”
— Arthur Rimbaud