Gérard de Nerval > Quotes

“Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that state which awaits us after death. Who knows if there is not some link between those two existences and if it is not possible for the soul to unite them now?”
― Gerard De Nerval

“l'imagination m'apportait des délices infinies. En recouvrant ce que les hommes appellent la raison, faudra-t-il regretter de les avoir perdues...?

My imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men call reason, do I have to regret the loss of these joys?...”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia

“It is impossible for a Parisian to resist the desire to flick through the old volumes laid out by a bookseller.

[Il est impossible, pour un Parisien, de résister au désir de feuilleter de vieux ouvrages étalés par un bouquiniste.]”
― Gérard de Nerval, Les Filles du feu - Les Chimères

“La mélancolie est une maladie qui consiste à voir les choses comme elles sont.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“What is madness...to go on platonically loving a woman who will never love you.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia and Other Writings

“You see spirits who talk to you in broad daylight, at night you see perfectly shaped, perfectly distinct phantoms, you think you remember having lived in other forms, you imagine you are growing very tall and that your head is touching the stars, the horizon of Saturn and Jupiter spreads before your eyes, bizarre creatures appear before you with all the characteristics of real beings . . . If the mind has to become completely unhinged in order to place us in communication with another world, it is clear that the mad will never be able to prove to the sane how blind they are, to say the very least!”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia

“Sleep occupies a third of our life. It is the consolation to the woes of our days or the woe of their pleasures; but I have never found that sleep was a rest. After a swoon of a few minutes a new life begins, freed from conditions of time and space, and doubtless like the life which awaits us after death. Who knows whether there does not exist a link between these two existences, and whether it is not possible for the soul now to bind them together?”
― Gerard de Nerval, Aurélia

“Water drinkers perceive nothing but the crude and material appearance of things, while intoxication, on the contrary, dulls the eyes of the body and brightens those of the soul.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“Moi ? C'est une image que je poursuis, rien de plus.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“Everything is alive, everything is in motion, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays that emanate from me or from others flow directly through the infinite chain of creation whose transparent network is in continuous communication with the planets and the stars. A captive here on earth for the moment, I commune with the chorus of stars and they join in my sorrows and joys.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“A serious bibliophile never lends his books. In fact he does not even read his books, for fear of wearing them out.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“The first man who compared a woman to a rose was a poet, the second, an imbecile .”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia

“I am the Dark One, – the Widower, – the Unconsoled
The Aquitaine Prince whose Tower is destroyed:
My only star is dead, - and my constellated lute
Bears the Black Sun of Melancholia.

In the night of the Tomb, You who comforted me,
Give me back Mount Posillipo and the Italian sea,
The flower that my afflicted heart liked so much
And the trellised vineyard where the grapevine unites with the rose.

Am I Amor or Phoebus ?… Lusignan or Biron ?
My forehead is still red from the Queen’s kiss;
I dreamt of the Cave where the mermaid swims…

Twice victorious I crossed Acheron:
Taking turn to play the Orpheus’ lyre
The sighs of the Saint and the Fairy’s screams.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Les Chimères

“One third of our life is spent in sleep. It is consolation for the troubles of our waking hours or atonement for their pleasures; but I have never experienced sleep to be mere repose. After a few minutes' lethargy, a new life begins, untrammeled by the limitations of time and space, and undoubtedly similar to that which awaits us after death...”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia

“My brow still burns from the kiss of the queen; I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims . . .”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“It is here that what I call the outpouring of dream into real life began. From that moment, everything took on a double aspect at times, and this occurred without my reason lacking logic and without my memory loosing the slightest details of what happened to me. But my actions, seemingly unconscious, were dominated by what human reason calls illusion.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Aurelia: The Dream and the Life

“If there is, to be sure, something more terrifying than the history of the fall of great empires, it is the history of the death of religions. Volney himself was overcome by this feeling as he visited the innumerable ruins of once-sacred buildings. The true believer may still escape from this impression, but with the inherent scepticism of our age all of us must sometime tremble to find so many dark gates opening out on to nothingness.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, but there is fortitude to be found in gall – forgive me my old-fashioned turns of phrase.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“Even as it clouds our corporeal vision, intoxication clarifies our spiritual vision. The mind, set free from the heavy bondage of the body, flees away like a prisoner whose guard has fallen asleep, leaving the keys at the prison gate.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“In a blank wall you may well fear the blindness which sees through you and sees you through.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“I’ve had enough of chasing after poetry; I believe that poetry lies at one’s very door or perhaps in one’s very bed. I’m still a man on the run, but I shall try to stop and wait.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“How lovely she was in her raiments of silk and levantine purple; the fabric provocatively set off the sheen of her white shoulders, which glistened with the sweat of the world. I was on the verge of giving in to the dangerous enticements of her caresses when I realized that I recognized her from an earlier encounter, back at the dawn of time.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

“The first man who compared woman to a rose was a poet, the second, an imbecile”
― Gérard de Nerval

“Les premiers instants du sommeil sont l'image de la mort...”
― Gérard de Nerval

“And then a lady in a window high,
Fair-haired, dark-eyed, and dressed in ancient style...
Whom, in another life, perhaps I've seen,
And whom I now remember with a sigh.”
― Gérard de Nerval

“En cherchant l'oeil de Dieu, je n'ai vu qu'un orbite
Vaste, noir et sans fond...”
― Gérard de Nerval, Les Chimères

“La pensée se glace en se traduisant en phrases.”
― Gerard de Nerval

“Homme, libre penseur ! te crois-tu seul pensant / Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose ? / Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose, / Mais de tous tes conseils l'univers est absent.

Respecte dans la bête un esprit agissant : / Chaque fleur est une âme à la Nature close ; / Un mystère d'amour dans le métal repose ; / 'Tout est sensible !' Et tout sur ton être est puissant.

Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t'épie : / À la matière même un verbe est attaché... / Ne le fais pas servir à quelque usage impie !

Souvent dans l'être obscur habite un Dieu caché ; / Et comme un oeil naissant couvert par ses paupières, / Un pur esprit s'accroît sous l'écorce des pierres!”
― Gérard de Nerval