Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
Good music resembles something. It resembles the composer.
I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.
Vivre est une chute horizontale. Life is a horizontal fall.
Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.
I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.
The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.
I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
A true photographer is as rare as a true poet or a true painter.
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself.
The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness.
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness.
Beauty makes one lose one's head. Poetry is born of this decapitation
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel.
Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.
The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
A picture is not a window...an abstract refers to no reality but its own.
Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.
If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed.
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
Don't for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels.
To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.
Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.