GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

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

I hate artists who are not of their time.

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

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

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.

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

Joy always came after pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How slow life is, how violent hope is.

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

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

Matisse renovates rather than innovates.

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

Joy came always after pain.

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.

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

People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.

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