Quotes from Stéphane Mallarmé

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

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

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.

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.

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

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

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.

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

Dreams have as much influence as actions.

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the ideal.

Such as into himself at last Eternity has changed him.

Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is.

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

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

The whole world is made to end up in a beautiful book.

A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance.

Dreams have as much influence as actions.

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

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

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

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.