Stephane Mallarme Quotes & Sayings

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis. — Stephane Mallarme

All thoughts emit a throw of dice — Stephane Mallarme

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

I go to see the shadow you have become. — Stephane Mallarme

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

I can see my reflection like that of an angel!
And I feel that I am dying, and, through the medium
Of art or of mystical experience, I want to be reborn,
Wearing my dream like a diadem, in some better land
Where beauty flourishes. — Stephane Mallarme

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

Paintings are painted with paint, not with ideas. — Stephane Mallarme

Dreams have as much influences as actions. — Stephane Mallarme

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing. — Stephane Mallarme

I should point out, creating one's own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of one's shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction. — Stephane Mallarme

exiled spirits, red
as the spotless toe of a seraph spread
with scarlet by the shame of rumpled dawns — Stephane Mallarme

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

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

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

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

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. — Stephane Mallarme

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! — Stephane Mallarme

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

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. — Stephane Mallarme

You made the sobbing white of lilies too,
tumbling lightly across a sea of sighs on
their dreamy way to weeping moonlight through
the azure incense of the pale horizon! — Stephane Mallarme

For we are always at one with the instrument of our magic spells. — Stephane Mallarme

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. — Stephane Mallarme

Verse is everywhere in language where there is rhythm, everywhere, except in notices and on page four of the papers. In the genre called prose, there are verses [ ... ] of all rhythms. But in truth there is no prose: there is the alphabet, and then verses more or less tight, more or less diffuse. — Stephane Mallarme

Dreams have as much influence as actions. — Stephane Mallarme

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

To define is to kill. To suggest is to create. — Stephane Mallarme

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

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. — Stephane Mallarme

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

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. — Stephane Mallarme

The world exists to end up in a book. — Stephane Mallarme

Paint, not the thing but the effect which it produces. — Stephane Mallarme

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. — Stephane Mallarme

A roll of the dice will never abolish chance. — Stephane Mallarme