Paul Claudel Quotes

I had completely forgotten about religion and in this respect had a savage ignorance of it. The first glimmer of truth came to me through an encounter with a great poet, who played a predominant part in the formation of my thinking and to whom I owe an eternal debt, Arthur Rimbaud. Reading Illuminations, then a few months later, Use Saison en Enfer was for me a capital event. For the first time, his books opened a crack in my materialist servitude and gave me a vivid and almost physical impression of the supernatural.

Si l'ordre est le plaisir de la raison, le désordre est le délice de l'imagination.

For things and for poems, there is but one way of being new, and that is to be true; there is only one way of being young, and that is to be eternal.

In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne.

Il y a une chose plus triste à perdre que la vie, c’est la raison de vivre,
Plus triste que de perdre ses biens, c’est de perdre son espérance.

There is something sadder to lose than life – the reason for living;
Sadder than to lose one's possessions is to lose one's hope.