French Poet Quotes

Charles Baudelaire

Arthur Rimbaud

Guillaume Apollinaire

Anatole France

Alfred de Musset

Théophile Gautier

Jean de La Fontaine

Beautiful... as the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.

Comte de Lautréamont

There is no mystery about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. They were not written by Shakespeare at all. They were all written by a total stranger, about whom all we know is that he was called Shakespeare.

Alphonse Allais

A good youth ought to have a fear of God, to be subject to his parents, to give honor to his elders, to preserve his purity; he ought not to despise humility, but should love forbearance and modesty. All these are an ornament to youthful years.

Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff and bird-changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky.

Guillaume Apollinaire

I am Arnaut who love the wind,
And chase the hare with the ox,
And swim against the torrent.

What colour are they now, thy quiet waters?
The evening star has brought the evening light,
And filled the river with the green hillside;
The hill-tops waver in the rippling water,
Trembles the absent vine and swells the grape
In thy clear crystal.

If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible.

Charles Baudelaire

Gaily! gaily! close our ranks!
Arm! Advance!
Hope of France!
Gaily! gaily! close our ranks!
Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!

Pierre-Jean de Béranger

This is not love, such has only its name and semblance, which loves no thing unless it gains from it.

Bernart de Ventadorn

Apollinaire asserted that Chirico's first paintings were done under the influence of kinesthetic disorders (migraines, colic, etc.)

With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.
With my lips today,
With my lips alone…

No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish, for the wise man's saying goes: "Whoever talks too much does himself a bad turn."

Chrétien de Troyes

I know everything, but I don't understand any of it.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Alphonse de Lamartine

In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn't all property theft?

Joseph Déjacque

The snail will get to Easter just as soon.

Eustache Deschamps

Even so the Blood (bred of good nourishment) By divers Pipes to all the body sent, Turns here to Bones there changes into Nerves; Here is made Marrow, there for Muscles serves.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

The light died out and left the sky,
We sighed and rose and said good-bye,
We had forgotten — He and I,
That he was dead, that I must die.

Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux

Farewell sadness
Good-day sadness
You are inscribed in the lines of the ceiling.

Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with all the means at his disposal.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it.

How many have died without having given even one kiss to their chimera!

Théophile Gautier

For I think that it's just as much good sense, if one can keep to the point, as to twist my words round each other.

Giraut de Bornelh

Women live only in the emotion that love gives. An old lady confessed that she had loved much, when young: "Ah!" she exclaimed, "the exquisite pain of those days!"

Arsène Houssaye

Le mensonge et les vers de tout temps sont amis. Lies and literature have always been friends.

Jean de La Fontaine