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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Paintings are painted with paint, not with ideas.

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

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

Dreams have as much influences as actions.

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.

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

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

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