Top 36 Quotes & Sayings by Guillaume Apollinaire

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony.

I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg.

The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Joy always came after pain.

It's raining my soul, it's raining, but it's raining dead eyes.

One can't carry one's father's corpse about everywhere.

I hate artists who are not of their time.

Without artists, the order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish.

We cannot carry our father's corpse with us everywhere we go.

Without artists, the sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed.

Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.

Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure

In this mirror, I am enclosed a live and real as you. Imagine angels and not like the reflections.

I don't want to work. I want to smoke.

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.

How slow life is, how violent hope is.

Matisse renovates rather than innovates.

Joy came always after pain.

People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.

Paint with whatever material you please - with pipes, postage stamps, postcards or playing cards, painted paper, or newspapers.

My, how beautiful is war! its songs, its leisure!

The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension.

Twentieth pupil of the centuries knows its stuff and bird-changed this century like Jesus climbs the sky.

Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind.

Come to the edge.' 'We can't. We're afraid.' 'Come to the edge.' 'We can't. We will fall!' 'Come to the edge.' And they came. And he pushed them. And they flew.

Color is the fruit of life.

When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.

Cubism is the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception.

One day/ One day I waited for myself/ I said to myself Guillaume it's time you came/ So I could know just who I am/ I who know others.

I sing the joy of wandering and the pleasure of the wanderer's death