French Poet Quotes

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

Father died last year. I don't subscribe to the theory by which we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult.

Michel Houellebecq

No one is satisfied with his fortune,
nor dissatisfied with his intellect

Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières

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

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

Lies and literature have always been friends.

In French: Le mensonge et les vers de tout temps sont amis.

Jean de La Fontaine

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

Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day.

Alfred de Musset

In life's orchestra, the bike is the double bass. Hard to forget it

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

When one has one good day in the year, one is not wholly unfortunate.

Marguerite de Navarre

To go away is to die a little, it is to die to that which one loves: everywhere and always, one leaves behind a part of oneself.

Edmond Haraucourt

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.

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

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

When liberty, this austere goddess,
Comes down to console people on earth;
That she finds them seated, in their heavy troubles,
On a ground cracked a thousand and four hundred years ago,
Her work which everywhere encounters a rebellious ground
Is very laborious before emerging beautiful

Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy

I beg to advise you of the following facts of which I happen to be the equally impartial and horrified witness.

Raymond Queneau

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

Théophile Gautier

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the ideal.

Stéphane Mallarmé

How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences)

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.

Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. It is faith that begets heretics. There are no heresies in a dead religion.

I die of thirst beside the fountain
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth
In my own country I'm in a distant land
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames

François Villon

Followers of trails and of seasons, breakers of camp in the little dawn wind, seekers of watercourses over the wrinkled rind of the world, o seekers, o finders of reasons to be up and be gone....

Saint-John Perse

Here is wisdom: to love wine, beauty and the divine Spring. That is enough, the rest is worthless.

Théodore de Banville