Stephane Mallarme Quotes

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Inspirational, Education

  24 Copy quote

• Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Teacher, Soul, Needs

  31 Copy quote

• The world exists to end up in a book.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Book, World, Ends

  "Encrypted" by Alex Ross, www.newyorker.com. April 11, 2016.

  52 Copy quote

• Poets don't finish poems, they abandon them.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Poet, Abandon

  23 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Wish, Sacred, Mystery

  19 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Paint, Produce, Effects

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Jobs, Reality, Creating

  24 Copy quote

• Dreams have as much influences as actions.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Dream, Action, Influence

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• A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Dice, Chance, Abolish

  1914 Title of poem, in Cosmopolis, May.

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• 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

  Dream, Lying, Soul

  "Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé". Book by Stephane Mallarme, translation by Rosemary Lloyd, 1988, 1988.

  24 Copy quote

• Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Poetry, Language, States

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Expression, Long

  19 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Ideas, Poetry

  15 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Beautiful, Book, Order

  15 Copy quote

• All thoughts emit a throw of dice

  Stephane Mallarme

  Dice

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Lonely, Reading, Mind

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Flower, Precious Stones

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Night, Names, Soul

  12 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Hands, Poetic, Pure

  14 Copy quote

• Paintings are painted with paint, not with ideas.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Ideas, Painting, Paint

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Numbers, Splits

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• 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

  Fall, People, Facts

  9 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Inspirational, Book, Reading

  10 Copy quote

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

  Stephane Mallarme

  Book, Flesh, Alas

  1887 'Brise marine', in Poe sies, Du Parnasse Contemporain (1893).

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• 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

  Men, Museums, Water

  Letter, May 17, 1867.

  12 Copy quote

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