Stephane Mallarme Quotations

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation.

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.

There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

But, O my soul, hear the song of the sailors.

To give a purer sense to the language of the tribe.

O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.

I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.

It is in front of the the paper that the artist creates himself.

As for me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because this self-lust has a delightful dying fall in my soul.

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.

Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.

In a museum in London there is an exhibit called "The Value of Man": a long coffinlike box with lots of compartments where they've put starch phosphorus flour bottles of water and alcohol and big pieces of gelatin. I am a man like that.

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

Paintings are painted with paint, not with ideas.

The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth.

A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright, To exist again, it’s enough if I borrow from Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night.

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.

All thoughts emit a throw of dice

Everything that is sacred and that wishes to remain so must envelop itself in mystery.

To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.

Poets don't finish poems, they abandon them.

Paint, not the thing but the effect which it produces.

Dreams have as much influences as actions.

Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!

The world exists to end up in a book.