Francis Ponge > Quotes

“For at the heart of the uniform, reasoning is shaky and elusive: a mind in search of ideas should first stock up on appearances.”
― Francis Ponge

“When it has finished saying it, it no longer is. The longer it is in saying it, the more it can say it at length, the more slowly it melts, the better quality it is.”
― Francis Ponge, Soap

“This is, perhaps, the utility of poets and artists. But let us now consider the pleasure they procure.
Well then, this pleasure usually stems from the fact that they know how to hide, to dissimulate their usefulness, that they do not turn into professors or moralists. That they limit themselves to transmitting to you their own emotion, their surprise, their wonder, their sense of the unexpected, the fatal, even of the tragic in daily reality. That they do not propose for you to change it but only to see it - and this, in the same conditions of quiet, security, tranquility, comfort, equilibrium - evidently factitious - which you are enjoying then, at the same time.”
― Francis Ponge, Soap

“Our most successful bubbles, our only successful ones are doubtless those that are the least worked. For can one work on a bubble? Surely not, - unless (carefully) with the very breath that gives it birth.
It is only necessary to blow it with an even enough breath, with just the right pretentiousness, a movement of the soul at once measured and persistent, yet not too much so - until it detaches itself quasi-spontaneously from the pipe.”
― Francis Ponge

“Et il y a des gens qui trouvent que tout cela ne grouille pas assez, qui font des vers, de la poésie, de la surréalité, qui en rajoutent. [...] Les réincarnations, les paradis, les enfers, enfin quoi : après la vie, la mort encore à vivre !”
― Francis Ponge, Le Parti pris des choses suivi de Proêmes

“Zodra zij zich blootstelt, beweegt zij zich voort.”
― Francis Ponge, The Nature of Things

“Προτιμώ να περπατώ στη λάσπη παρά στην αδιαφορία και προτιμώ να γυρίζω λασπωμένος παρά άσπιλος, σαν να μην υπήρχα για τις εκτάσεις που πατώ.”
― Francis Ponge

“Man is the future of man.”
― Francis Ponge

“Het ontsnapt me en toch tekent het me, zonder dat ik er veel aan doen kan.”
― Francis Ponge, The Nature of Things